


DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 











DURE ONIVERST TN PUBLICATIONS 


THE 
GRUB-STREET 
JOURNAL 


Lonpon: 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 


New York: 
G. E. STECHERT & CO. 


Toxyo: 
MARUZEN COMPANY, LTD. 


SHANGHAI: 
EDWARD EVANS & SONS, LTD. 





Nuom 0 


The Grub-ftreet Journal. 


Co be continued Weekly. ‘ 














Thursday, JANUART 8. 1730. . 





The INTRODUCTION. 


Dullnefi! whofe good old caufe I yet defend, 

With whom my Mufe began, with whom foall end! 

For thee I dim thefe eyes and fluff this bead : ; 
With all fuch reading as was never read. Dunciad. B. I. 





Grub flrect, Jal 7-17 39- thall ah communicate a Acco Ge fet, Books, as thal! re- 
ceive their sation. It may, bjecred peshapa, shict 
SHE heft Thinzs bere below are Hindle to be cor- is already dom foshe New Meni of Lhcmare aL SHCORES Tet 
HW rupeed, aud the ester Things are inthe own Na~ Author, tho" gives an Account of the Works of Kveral 
EAD cures, the more mifchierous are they if corrupted +. of ows Members, and is indeed one of them himfell, yet 
i Books are on all hands allowed to be of omits a great Number of excellent Uooks, the lefien of his 
the greateft Benefit to Mankind; whence E Undertaking being ehielly to recommend thofe which are pub- 
inter, that a bad Book mutt be oue of the fifhed for one Bookieller only, We fhallalfo publeh Intl na 
greatett of Evils. Qur Society has been’ tions, as the Society and the Compofers of them thal sive leaves 
always compofed of fiich learned and svor- and fometimes relate the learned Debaccs which happen anjong 
thy Members, as have produced the belt of our Members on a great variety of Subjects, Anu Af olitica 
Books themlelvcs, and done what inthem Differtations have been always the peculiar proviea f th 4 
lay to auras the bad. This Procedure hasdrawn on them Society, care will be taken thac their Journal may ave b 
the Oppofitian ot fome Men whole Malice infumeely furpailes deficient in this particular. This Branch ts et te ne 
their Ability : but after all the Pains they have taken, the Sednune, a worthy old Citizen, who h reese, tts 
have proved nothing, bur that they themiclyes have metler rhe Kavancage to that of the publi . Thi as FiceiBeed his cers 
resfaning af Mer of Seuje, ner the Sigle of polite Mex, ner thefinegity undestaken to collett all See dat fatoltnch een as 
of bout Men, fe jhe Irmanity of Gentlemen, or Mon of Letters “the other Papers; to a Se eee ae of News irom 
jefe Men’ (if I may fo call them) whenever they em Wi " Jbfe ee eee 
been defirous to run dows any Book, i low, tava faa ese prlalinars cheak ae se Obfervarions, He hap. tieeWil 
temptible, have beftowed on it the Epithet of Grub-[ireet asif ders, A apataans Prodial ae Alonal Payers, relating to Mus 
it was a futhcient Note of Infamy to fuppole it to come Irom Mr. Sais as contt # 7 LG A . 
Hee Bee ae this esa abundantly convince the Pub- Society, obliges inv te heft ayes Toeuies parece ND 
ick of what Dignity, Excellence, and Ufe our Society is; x r oule, that. Be meay als 
how mean and Aefpicable our Adverfiries are, the Rhine eticeoneniach ee SiAls Ae, Caste HORE eat as 
already laid down feem futhctent to thew, why this Paper in his Ketidence, by hl Shier aacee Me Ih acrombant aay 
ought now to be publifhed ; it will perhaps be more dificult no&only irequentl , re opty, an excellent Posts wivo alt 
to Ely the Publick why fomething ot this kind never came Pocars a <b renee ee ha pe) Bawa. ae fome f of his 
out belore, ; = 5 id skewile ready to com pole Pane 
It is truc indeed, that altho’ this Society has ful Gyticks of Satyrs, Anagrams or Acrolticks, Copies of Veries 
ene yer they Tee aiae before publuhed ry aiid soe fee sneagtes Authors, or annual Saldtations from City 
ciety, Buc it this be an Objection, itinuit hold as ftrong againit R jen to their worthy Maiters and Mutrefles, at reafonable 
other Societies of Men ot Letters. “Lhe Royal Academy of se i : 
Sciences at Paris never publithed any o¥ their Memoirs till dace b ey ee the mention of ene very confiderable Mem- 
Years ago ; and the Royat Society Of London have not publithed aah foe bears the ‘Title of Hiflorian to the Society, Gy hy 
any Hiftory of themfelves, except what was done by Dr. sprat Si lundieluft, lg, The other Officers receive Salaries trum the 
foon after their Inititution. But.that nothing be wanting, ar ocicty 5 but Squire Blundertu's has generoully declind the 
learned Member is preparing an Account of’ the Antiquities of Pessina!) of any ot the publick Money , fometody huving (gr bons 
Grui-flreet, with it’s Hiltory, continued down to the pref fem ying te dixe on. We Shall Yoructimes oblige ce Publicis 
Limes oe our Account in this Paper may begin gt this a ie Characters drawn by bim of our deceated 
Initant ; and we may continue to gr y - . 
Hultory of the moit faearrane of thee Trance ee Ae Ren oy al the Care of publithing this Paper will tie on 
Thit i purfur OL this DeGanis we dhallitclare thew: admniil me. And tho’ | fhall have Rftficient Matter4rom the Journals 
of new Menibers, which are very frequi ions of the Society, to. continue the Publication of ly y 
: ery frequent. For nofooner does if any | ed Pe 3 Gh EWE Yee 
any learned Gentleman publith a Work,.which they 4 any learned Peabns will favour me with their Corretpou> 
of, but they immediately give h: Place ‘4 approve dence, their ingenious Communications thai} be h 4 x 
¥ sive him a Place, among them, We ken notice of, by the ; s thal] be honourably ta: 
of, py their Faithiul Friend and Humble Sere 


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THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL, NUMBER 1, PAGE 1 


THE 


GRUB-STREET 
JOURNAL 


BY 
JAMES T. HILLHOUSE, Pu.D. 





DUKE 
UNIVERSITY PRESS 
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA 
1928 


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PREFACE 


The present study began merely as an attempt to discover 
the nature of Pope’s connection with the Grub-street Journal, 
and incidentally to identify its editors, especially the mysterious 
Russel. A study of the Journal and other contemporary 
sources of information, however, has thrown very little light on 
the first and main point. It is impossible to say whether the idea 
of the Journal originated with Pope, or precisely what he had to 
do with it after it got under way. That it began as little more 
than an organ of Pope is clear enough; that fact had indeed 
been recognized by many writers. It can be said, however, that 
very soon the paper abandoned its original scheme of being 
simply a continuation of The Dunciad, and went its own ways, 
quite prosperously and quite independently of Pope, a fact 
which seems to have been ignored or slighted in previous dis- 
cussion of it. . 

The second point, the matter of editors, Russel in particular, 
turned out to be much more important than it had seemed. It 
has been possible to add considerably to Mr. Lounsbury’s 
account of Russel in The First Editors of Shakespeare, and to 
come to the conclusion that he was much more of a force in the 
Journal than had appeared before. In fact, it does not seem 
extravagant to say that during most of its life Russel was. the 
Grub-street Journal. 

As this became clear, and as further exploration revealed the 
fact that, despite the importance of the Pope material, the paper 
was very interesting quite apart from any concern of Pope’s, it 
seemed worth while to try to give an account of it for its own 
sake; to make clear what was in it. The most obvious method, 
that of reprinting it, was impractical. It is extremely bulky, and 
much of it is not worth reprinting. The selection of interesting 
and significant items was also for several reasons unworkable 
and unsatisfactory. The best scheme finally seemed to be the 
description and discussion of the material, in chapter form. 
The Journal spent most of its time in combat; hence the matter 
of organization consisted largely of tracing out its campaigns 
and grouping them according to their nature. Thus there took 
form, after an introductory chapter describing the paper and 





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vi PREFACE 


sketching its history, chapters on Pope and the Dunces, on the 
campaigns against the textual criticism of Bentley and Theo- 
bald, on its quarrels with other periodicals, on the mass of liter- 
ary and dramatic material in general, and finally on its treatment 
of legal, theological, and medical subjects. 

Under one or another of these headings it seemed possible to 
organize most of the significant matter of the Journal, although 
there was a heterogeneous pile of shreds and patches that defied 
any order. Any of this that had any obvious importance was 
worked in somewhere; the rest had to be left in its present 
limbo. (Many items in this last group may be traced down in the 
Appendix.) Any subject to which the Journal gave a consider- 
able amount of space, finally got itself recorded, I think, if only 
in a footnote reference. Much of the material in the Journal is 
sly and indirect; its true import is frequently very well con- 
cealed, and it is often very difficult to decide exactly what a 
writer’s point of view is. I have tried, however, to look out for 
veiled irony and sarcasm, and I hope that other readers of the 
Journal will not find many instances where I have been gullible. 
In view of the fact that discussion of this sort in chapter form 
possibly failed to give a consistent view of the paper as a whole, 
it seemed necessary to add the appendix, a chronological sum- 
mary, issue by issue, of the two main sections of the Journal 
and the Courier. 

In presenting this material, I have continually quoted or para- 
phrased liberally, with the purpose of doing the next best thing 
to reprinting. If the method seems at times rather discursive, 
perhaps the fact that the Journal is at present a rara avis may 
be offered in justification. The Yale Library has a complete file 
of the Journal and also of its sequel, the Literary Courier. The 
British Museum has in the Burney Collection a number of 
incomplete files which supplement one another’s gaps. In 1921 a 
complete file, including the sequel, came into the market for a 
moment, and then disappeared into an inaccessible private col- 
lection. The only other complete file that I have ever heard of 
was that of James Crossley, who announced his possession of 
the Journal and the Literary Courter in Notes and Queries in 
1853. This may of course be the file which appeared in 1921. 
Thus there are at present accessible only two complete files of 
the Journal, one in England and one in America. In addition 
there is a file which is almost practically complete in the Aitken 


PRERACE vii 


collection at the University of Texas; it lacks only nine num- 
bers of the Journal and five of the Courier. 

Most of the materials for the work were collected at the 
British Museum, the Bodleian, the Yale Library, and the 
Library of the University of Minnesota, in all of which various 
officials have most willingly gone out of their way to assist me. 
I am also under great obligation to the Library of the University 
of Texas, which lent me its file of the Journal for a very con- 
siderable period; to Mr. C. A. Moore, who was so good as to 
read the manuscript ; and finally to the Duke University Press, 
which has published the book, and especially its editor, Mr. 
Paull F. Baum, who undertook the drudgery of editing the 
manuscript and seeing it safely through the press. 

i feed Bega 
February 6, 1928. 


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TABLE OF CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The History of the Grub-street Journal 3 

II. Pope and the Dunces 47 

III. Bentley’s Milton and Theobald’s Shakespeare 84 

IV. Quarrels with Other Periodicals 105 

V. Literary and Dramatic Criticism 158 

VI. The Law, Theology, and Medicine 226 
Appendix. Summary of the Contents of the Journal 

and the Literary Courter 2o7, 

Index 349 

ILLUSTRATIONS 
The Grub-street Journal, number 1, page 1 Frontispiece 


Humphrey Parsons, Lord Mayor of London, 
1730 Facing page 24 


The Art and Mystery of Printing Facing page 80 
Typical News Items Facing page 110 












GRUB-STREET ia 
JOURNAL 














CHAPTER I 


THE HISTORY OF THE GRUB-STREET 
JOURNAL 


On Thursday, January 8th, 1730, the reading public of 
London was offered the first number of the Grub-street Jour- 
nal. The new paper consisted of a small folio of four pages. 
At its head was the information that it was “to be con- 
tinued weekly,” and beneath, four significant lines from The 
Dunciad, Book I. 

Dullness, whose good old cause | yet defend, 
With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end! 


For thee I dim these eyes, and stuff this head 
With all such reading as was never read. 


At once it explained its mission. It was to rehabilitate the 
name Grub-street. It might be expected to give an account of 
the meetings of the Grub-street Society,—which had always 
existed and deserved to have its history published—with de- 
bates and dissertations, and an account of elections (which 
would be very frequent) ; “for no sooner does any learned 
Gentleman publish a work which they approve of, but they 
immediately give him a place among them.” It would also 
furnish critical reviews of books and accounts of “Murders, 
Apparitions, Prodigies, etc.,”’ and would place at the service 
of its readers a number of special writers—Mr. Quidnunc 
on politics, Mr. Poppy on poetry, and Giles Blunderbuss, 
Historian (to receive no salary, ‘somebody having left him 
something to live on’). And finally the writer of the article, 
Mr. Bavius, announced that the care of publishing the paper 
would lie on him. Following this announcement of policy, 
Mr. Quidnunc promised readers the current news, both do- 
mestic and foreign, with the name of the original paper from 
which he took it, and such comment as might be necessary. 
The remainder of the first number was filled with news items 
and the “Prices of stocks yesterday”, and at the end the usual 
printer’s advertisement: “London; Printed and sold by J. 


[3] 


4 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Roberts in Warwick-Lane, and at the pamphlet-shops of 
London and Westminster, also at the Pegasus (vulgarly 
called the Flying-Horse) in Grubstreet. Price Two Pence.” 

As it had promised, it appeared again on the following 
Thursday and regularly thereafter for eight full years, or 
until the end of 1737. Then, having run its natural course 
and worn itself out, it expired. Its ghost, however, reluctant 
to leave its haunts, continued to drag out a sorry existence 
for some six months more under the name of the Literary 
Courier of Grub-street, and then vanished altogether. 

The Grub-street Journal seems to have come upon the town 
quite unannounced and without puffs-preliminary or ex- 
planation as to the identity of founders or editors. The title 
of the paper, the introductory quotation, and the opening 
statement made it apparent that the Journal was to be humor- 
ous and ironical,’ and that it was to be chiefly concerned with 
literature. For the present, this was all the information 
vouchsafed. It very soon became clear, however, that the new 
paper prized beyond all others the virtues of the gadfly, and 
that it revelled in personalities set down in gall. Another 
point that at once became perfectly obvious was that Alex- 
ander Pope had some sort of connection with the new ven- 
ture. The first issue had opened with a quotation from The 
Dunciad, and succeeding ones drew frequently for headings 
upon the same poem and other satirical pieces from Pope’s 
pen. It was likewise as plain as day that the paper was always, 
under its irony, reverent of him and favorable to his friends, 
and was correspondingly acid when a Dunce or one of his 
enemies was concerned. In its sardonic and ironical reversal 
of terms, however, the Journal usually referred to Pope, 
Swift, and their circle in some such phrase as “our profest 
enemies,’ while the unfortunate scribbler or poetaster under 

* Apparently the original intention was that the paper should be con- 
sistently ironical. In the preface to The Memoirs of Grub-street (see post) 
the chief editor said that there was no reason why they should be always 
ironical, as that became monotonous and confined. He speaks of the 
Prompter’s censure of them for inconsistency in making use of other 


methods than irony, and says that the paper, in order to attract all 
sorts of readers, was given as much variety as possible. 


LES MALS OEY 5 


‘ 


fire was “our friend” or “our colleague.” All this obviously 
suggested that the Journal was to be a sequel to The Dunciad, 
and that a new campaign against the Dunces was under way, 
a campaign in which the victims might be subjected to the 
continuous assaults of a weekly newspaper. 

The crowd of journals into the midst of which the new 
paper thrust itself and with which it entered into competition 
was by no means brilliant or striking. Professor Lounsbury, 
a most industrious reader of the newspapers of the period, 
describes himself forlornly as “wading through the inter- 
minable bog” of that literature. And one can sympathize with 
him. It is true that journalistic writing throws innumerable 
shafts of light upon the life of its time, and that many things 
about daily life, manners, and ideas may be learned better 
from newspapers than from more regular and respectable 
forms of literature. Nevertheless, even at their best, news- 
papers are bound to contain an enormous bulk of stuff that 
dies the day after it is written, and that from any ordinary 
point of view is quite incapable of resurrection. In the early 
eighteenth century, moreover, journalism was not at its best. 
The British public had at its service a sufficient number of 
newspapers, daily, semi-weekly, and weekly, most of them 
flimsy in content, and badly printed on poor paper. For news 
they offered a scanty collection of brief items, domestic and 
foreign. They informed their readers of the births, mar- 
riages, deaths, and other important events in the lives of the 
great, and they chronicled with all possible vividness sensa- 
tional murders and other crimes of violence. Most of them 
were apparently in the pay of one of the great political par- 
ties and regaled their readers with endless diatribes on long 
since forgotten details of policy—mountains which are no 
longer even mole hills. When political interest waned, they 
filled space with discussions of philosophy or theology, or 
with milk-and-water moral essays cut from the pattern of the 
Spectator. On occasion, when the editor or “writer’’—fre- 
quently a paper seems to have been the product of a single 
hack pen—was short of time or interest, one even finds a 


6 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


series of issues devoted to chapters quite frankly borrowed 
from some book already in print. There were, naturally, ex- 
ceptions like the Craftsman and other strong political papers 
heavily subsidized from party treasuries, but the common run 
were thin and poverty-stricken. It is not surprising that most 
papers enjoyed a very short life. Having little in them, they 
were easily bred and just as easily killed; they were as 
ephemeral as mayflies, and their death notices are so fre- 
quent as to pass almost unremarked. 

The Grub-street Journal rose high above the dead monoto- 
nous level. It may be that the very flatness and worthless- 
ness of most of its contemporaries increase and emphasize its 
qualities and place it upon an eminence to which it could not 
have aspired in more distinguished surroundings. It must be 
admitted, moreover, that a journey through it means the 
crossing of many wide arid stretches. That is bound to be 
true of any newspaper read after its own day. And one reads 
also occasional complaints from correspondents in the Jour- 
nal itself about its harping too long on a single string, or 
too great enthusiasm over subjects which could under no 
circumstances interest more than a very few special readers. 
But in reading it one is after all never out of sight of an 
oasis. If its editors had not shown a vigor and vitality such 
as are to be sought in vain in its contemporaries, it would not 
be worth while to try to rescue it from the limbo of obscurity 
where most of the early eighteenth-century periodicals lan- 
guish. During its best years it was almost always active and 
lively ; and even later, when it was perceptibly declining to- 
ward its end, it could be counted on for an occasional flash of 
its original vivacity. 

In addition, the Journal was planned on lines which give 
it with later readers an advantage over even its most pros- 
perous colleagues like the Craftsman. It eschewed politics* 

?In the preface to The Memoirs of Grub-street (see post, pp. 23 ff.) it 
is said that the Journal touched politics only as it remarked upon the 
manners and methods of political squabbles in other papers. It did, how- 
ever, occasionally show some interest in political questions, notably the 


excise, which it detested. In number 46 appears a defense of the Queen 
against the aspersions of the London Journal. What political leanings it 


LSE SO Tee 7 


and wandered at large through a field which embraced litera- 
ture of all sorts, including poetry, drama, criticism, medicine, 
theology, and education; and it received correspondence from 
innumerable sources on a thousand and one various sub- 
jects. In its handling of news items culled from the dailies 
it also showed a keenness of dry wit and sardonic humor 
which even after two hundred years make its news columns 
entertaining. In its appearance, it was the equal of the highly 
subsidized political papers, and infinitely superior to the 
common run. Its chief attraction then as now, however, lay 
in the zest with which it embarked upon controversies of all 
sorts, and in its skill and vigor in prosecuting them. This is 
especially true of its earlier career; later some of its quar- 
tels dragged on interminably, and, one suspects, were kept 
going to fill space. 

In view of the Journal’s propensity for personal attack, 
and its obvious connection with Pope, it is not surprising 
that its readers, and especially its victims, soon became dis- 
satisfied with the modicum of whimsical information it had 
vouchsafed them concerning its origins and motives. About 
Mr. Poppy, Mr. Quidnunc, and Giles Blunderbuss they 
evinced no curiosity; these characters were plainly fictitious. 
But with Mr. Bavius, and the colleague, Mr. Maevius, whom 
he soon took unto himself as an assistant, it was altogether 
betrays are Tory, and Jacobite. In the first number a political editor is 
named, but in the third appears a burlesque discussion in which it is 
decided best to avoid politics. In 84 it made a general attack on political 
journalism in a letter to “Ulrick D’Ypres” the “writer” of the Daily 
Courant, who, it is hinted, was generally thought to be the brother of the 
greatest subject in Great Britain. This letter, written by the editor, Rich- 
ard Russel (see post), asserts the Journal’s political impartiality and 
records the party affiliations of the other papers. According to Russel, 
the Craftsman and Fog’s Journal were the only two papers in opposition, 
while the London Journal, the Free Briton, the Weekly Register, the 
Hyp Doctor and the Daily Courant were ministerial, but he states his 
belief that the Hyp Doctor and Weekly Register were receiving no pay 
as yet. While the Journal was never really friendly with any other 
papers, it occasionally took sides with the opposition pair. Note, for 
instance, an epigram in the Daily Courant (quoted in number 76) against 
“D’Anvers [the Craftsman], Fog, and Grub” with an answer by the 
Grub-street editor attacking the Courant, the London Journal and the 


Free Briton. Note too the account of a quarrel between the Craftsman 
and the Free Briton in 79, 80, and 81. 


8 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


different. The victims of their sarcasms and aspersions show- 
ed no disposition to leave it at mere Bavius and Maevius, but 
at once undertook to ferret out their proper names, and to 
make as public as possible the facts of their private lives. 
About Pope’s finger in the pie they were equally concerned, 
and although they were able to get little light on the activities 
of that very devious person, they were shrilly insistent not 
only on the fact that he had a finger in the pie, but that he had 
been its chief baker, and that Bavius and Maevius were mere 
henchmen, servilely dependent upon his whims. 

The title of the paper and the introductory statement made 
the Journal’s aims and purposes only fairly clear. Its original 
motive was much more specifically defined by Bavius some 
seven years later in his preface to The Memoirs of Grub- 
street. He describes the great increase of low and ignorant 
writers which had followed upon the relaxation of licensing 
laws in the seventeenth century, and the consequent outpour- 
ing of “false histories, lewd or immoral treatises, novels, 
plays, or poems,” and the growing practice among booksellers 
of fostering the production of such works, as well as of all 
sorts of journals and newspapers dealing in false news, puffs, 
and advertisements. To reform this state of affairs “was the 
end and design of some gentlemen, who, in order to carry 
it on with the greater propriety, formed themselves into an 
imaginary society, as meeting once a week at the Pegasus, 
which is a real house in Grub-street.”’ 

These gentlemen, it appears further, were interested in 
promoting the fortunes of good but unpopular books, in 
restoring life to those which had fallen into neglect, and in 
getting at the truth where authorities disagreed, as for in- 
stance, Pope and Swift, “the two finest writers of the age”, 
had disagreed over Dryden’s translation of Virgil.* Converse- 
ly, they were of course also interested in exposing the stu- 
pidity and viciousness of all sorts of bad books and of the 
newspapers—apparently all newspapers were bad. As a 

%In substance, Swift had made Dryden a Grubean and joined him with 


Dennis, Rymer, Tate, and Durfey on account of his Virgil, which Pope 
declared ‘ ‘the most noble and spirited translation in any language.” 


ITS AISTORY 9 


matter of fact, the second half of this policy must have seem- 
ed more practical than the first, for in the Journal’s columns 
exposure and censure far outweigh praise. Indeed it soon be- 
came evident that the Journal made exposure of faults, real 
or supposed, its chief business, and that satire and irony were 
the breath of life in its nostrils. Controversy became at once 
its daily food, and hence it got for itself not only many 
enemies but many readers, for it was sharp, pungent, and 
clever, and knew no limits in its boldness. The virulent fierce- 
ness and personality of some of its quarrels were enough to 
give it preéminence and distinction even in the period of 
George II. The editors had their own quarrels, which they 
conducted with great gusto, but their columns were gladly 
opened to all correspondents, with special encouragement to 
those who had axes to grind, and whose enemies were will- 
ing to fight back. Thus the Journal’s history is a long series 
of quarrels carried on by the editors in their proper capacity 
or between correspondents, toward whom they were more or 
less impartial, but whom they were glad to see fighting. 

In spite of the Journal’s fondness for controversy and its 
long sucession of skirmishes and pitched battles, it would be 
inaccurate to assume that all the material contained in it was 
controversial. Bavius realized perhaps that a paper devoted 
entirely to quarrels more or less literary in nature would 
before long pall on the generality of its readers. Then too, 
at moments the tide of controversy was slack, and profitable 
quarrels hard to find. For these two probable reasons there is 
in the Journal an enormous bulk of moral essays, miscellane- 
ous articles, and poems, which served to offer relaxation and 
variety, or merely to fill space agreeably. In fact such con- 
tributions, before they were finally printed, often gathered 
dust for some months or even years, to the great scandal 
and distress of their complaining authors. 

One is almost tempted to say that no subject is left un- 
touched in the Journal’s columns. There are moral essays and 
type character sketches of the sort established by Steele and 
Addison. There are numerous expositions on manners—in 


10 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


conversation, at church and the theater, and in dealing with 
servants; there are satires on ladies’ clubs, love, marriage, 
curiosity, chastity, gossip, the association of children with 
servants, the vanity of titles, oaths, dullness, happiness, and 
so on; and there are the characters of the city flirt, the coun- 
try bumpkin, the university prig, the endless talker, and the 
“pretty fellow’’.* There is some satire on legal subjects, and 
a great deal both of satire and direct discussion on religion 
and medicine. And in addition there are innumerable items 
which can only be classified as miscellaneous or nondescript.® 

The paper seems to have caught on at once, and to have 
flourished most prosperously for some five years, or through 


*For a typical instance, note in 101 an essay on conversation signed 
“A. H.,” possibly Aaron Hill. The writer remarks that conversation is 
supported for the sake of instruction and diversion and then criticizes 
methods of story telling in conversation. He distinguishes the insipid 
and soporifick types, the first marked by such phrases as what d’ye think, 
I'll tell you what, and so, and then, as\I said! before, the type in which 
no one syllable that could be included has been omitted, the forgetful, 
with phrases like Mr. what’s his name?, the atheistical, immoral type, 
full of damme, rot it, and so forth. He also mentions the egotism of 
autobiography, and speaks of the nudgers who enforce their stories with 
digs of the elbow, and against whom he threatens to bring legal action 
the next time he is assaulted. 

*As for example articles on fisheries in 222 and 225. In 219 “Tom 
Meanwell” suggested that the Journal take up the question of fishery as 
very important to British commerce, and as the best means of reéstablish- 
ing the woollen trade and getting back the balance of power. He praised 
highly the effusions of a late pamphleteer on the subject, and offered to 
undertake the task himself if the Journal showed itself receptive, as it 
did. Some of the discussions to which the Journal allowed a considerable 
amount of space in a number of issues, but which do not seem to have 
enough interest or significance to warrant detailed treatment in the follow- 
ing pages, might be mentioned here:—On the death of Jezreel Jones, 
naturalist, with a letter paraphrased in verse, 75, 76; an analysis of the 
affairs of two fraudulent financial ventures, the Charitable Corporation 
(a case of embezzlement), 127 ff., and the York Buildings Company, 
251 ff.; a reprint of portions of John Gabriel’s The State of the Nation 
(John Gabriel is described as a crazy hack writer,—“he was a member 
of our Society” and was imitating a mad “Mr. Gregory of Christ Church, 
Oxford,” who wrote under the pseudonym of Gabriel John. John Gabriel's 
style justifies the description of him; it is most absurdly fantastic), 
144, 152, 153, 161, 170, 196 (evidently this material was used as a con- 
venient filler from time to time) ; an account of the Goole-Hudson case, 
involving the marriage laws; (these articles are a summary of a pamphlet 
The Contract Violated by the Reverend John Goole, 248, 249, 250) ; and a 
series of letters on a projected scheme to reduce the interest on annuities, 
379, 381, 385, 386. 


TES HISTORY 11 


1734. The fact that it very soon increased the size of its page® 
was of course a sign that it was making headway, and the 
utterances not only of its own editors but also of contem- 
porary journalists, including some of its enemies, establish 
definitely the fact that it was successful. In the preface to 
the Memoirs, Bavius declares that in spite of opposition from 
various sources it “‘yielded a very considerable monthly divi- 
dend for a good while’; and in number 126, when it had 
been running two and a half years, he boasted that its circu- 
lation had increased five times since the first two months.‘ 
The Weekly Register, one of the Journal’s fiercest opponents, 
although it was, in the Journal’s oft-repeated phrase, “‘an ob- 
scure weekly paper,” claimed in its ninety-third issue, late in 
1731, that it was increasing its sales steadily, and that it was 
“not in the power of the authors of the Grubstreet, with all 
their popularity, to say the same.” Again in a systematic 
attack in July, 1732, the Register speaks of the Journal as 
having “long subsisted very oddly, universally condemned 
and yet universally read.” Eustace Budgell, in a survey of the 
London journals in the first number of the Bee (1733), 
says of “such papers as are designed for the amusement and 
diversion of the town,” “among these the Grub-street Jour- 
nal seems to claim the first place.” The editors of the paper 
were continually explaining to their correspondents that let- 
ters were delayed or not printed at all because of the great 
number that came in, and as late as number 221, early in 
1734, were suggesting the possibility of a more frequent 

° The first issues were 9%4 by 12 inches. With the eighth number the 
page was increased to 10 by 14; and the final size, 11 by 15, was estab- 
lished July 30, 1730. These figures refer to the size of the printed block; 
the margins vary greatly. 

This statement came in connection with verses by “Claudia Rufina,” 
said by the writer to have been composed two months after the Journal’s 
first appearance. The subject is the “unparalleled stupidity” of the paper, 
and the spirit may be judged by the lines— 

At first your Journal to elude the shame 

It feared by owning its true parents name 
Stole that of matchless Pope to give it fame. 
But soon the cheat appeared, for now we see 
’Tis Grubstreet all, without an irony, 


Its future merit you yourself knew best _ 
So named it Grub and spoke the truth in jest. 


12 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


publication the next winter to take care of the excellent con- 
tributions which were now crowded out or delayed until they 
became stale. The republication of material from the Journal 
in the magazines and in three books of selections attests still 
further the interest of the public in the paper. Both the Gen- 
tleman’s and the London Magazine made it, until the end of 
1735, one of their chief sources of supply, drawing upon it 
continuously for large amounts of its best material, and often 
reprinting or summarizing the same articles. Conversely the 
small amount of material borrowed, or in Bavius’ words, 
“stolen,” from it after 1735, is also an accurate index of the 
Journal’s decline during its last years. 

Its last three years were, indeed, much less happy. Mr. 
Bavius, who had been the chief power in the paper since its 
beginning, and the sole editor since the middle of 1731, re- 
signed at the end of 1735. His enemy, the Prompter, declared 
his retirement due to discomfiture on the field of battle, but 
his own explanations in the Journal itself and in his preface 
to The Memoirs of Grub-street seem more credible. Appar- 
ently during 1735, if not before, the paper came under the 
influence of persons with interests of their own and a desire 
to dictate policies. He speaks of “having met with great oppo- 
sition from some who were then [1735] partners in the 
paper,” and asserts, “they were highly offended, if any bad 

*In 316, January 15, 1736, appears the announcement: “According to 
resolution taken long before and communicated to some of you above 
six months ago, I now resign the office of Secretary, which I have exe- 
cuted either in conjunction with another person or solely by myself from 
the time of the first apearance of our Journal.’’—He continues that since 
the design of the Journal had been to expose, it could not but bring on 
calumniations. Abuse and personal reflections had begun in the Weekly 
Register, continued in the Hyp Doctor and the Bee and had been “lately 
carried to a much greater height in the Prompter.” He goes on to defend 
his policy, especially his practice of cutting down contributors’ letters. 
He says that he has tried to be fair to both sides in arguments between 
correspondents but has found it very difficult, and despite his efforts has 
been involved in great trouble. As the principal reason for his resignation 
he alleges other work in hand and the impossiblity of doing justice to it 
and the Journal at the same time. He hopes soon to bring out the two 
volumes of select memoirs, which are now well advertised, and asks 
that he may still continue, as a correspondent, to figure in the columns 


of the Journal. A year and a half later in his preface to the Memoirs, 
one gets still closer to the real reasons for his withdrawal. 


ETS AIST ORY 13 


book, in which they had any concern or interest was exposed.” 
From this and other hints one derives the impression that 
the Journal had got into the hands of a group of booksellers 
who would not leave Bavius “solely accountable for the 
choice of the pieces published.” At any rate, Bavius’ with- 
drawal was fatal. It was his energetic and cutting satire— 
“low” and malicious though it may have been at times— 
that gave the paper its distinction, and without him it gradu- 
ally sank. There were other contributing or complicating 
causes of decay. Chief of these was the rise of the maga- 
zines, which abridged material from the dailies and weeklies, 
and by supplying the public with tidbits from all the papers 
ruined their subscription lists. Both in the Journal itself and 
in his preface, Bavius dilates on the iniquity of the maga- 
zines. He also states, however, that the other papers refused 
to advertise the Journal, and that it was persecuted at the 
post-office, where the clerks often substituted other papers 
for it, so that it was difficult to get it to its country sub- 
scribers. 

Beset with all these difficulties, it fell upon the evil days 
which culminated in its suspension at the end of 1737. 

In spite of its policy of obscurity and secrecy it is possible 
to glean some information from the Journal concerning the 
details of its management, and incidentally to get some in- 
sight into the contemporary ethics of journalism in such 
matters as the prerogatives of editors, their relations with 
correspondents, and so forth. 

Bavius himself contributed continuously and largely to 
the paper. The leading articles are frequently his, and often 
essays and letters from outsiders are introduced and followed 
by his editorial comment. The collation of news items from 
other papers® and the satirical comments thereon were of 
course the work of Bavius, as were also by far the greater 
part of the shorter prose notes and some of the verse which 
went to make up a column called “From the Pegasus in 
Grub-street,”’ which began in the sixteenth issue. But from 


* The Journal habitually collected the reports of a given occurrence 
and printed them together to expose their infinite variety. See post, p. 110. 


14 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the beginning and more and more as the paper grew older 
Bavius depended upon correspondents to fill his columns. 
Practically always these correspondents signed their articles 
either with initials or pseudonyms, and the cases where their 
identity can be guessed are very few.!° The ascriptions in 
The Memoirs of Grub-street show that the editors themselves 
wrote as correspondents, occasionally not disdaining the 
journalistic trick of carrying on both sides of a quarrel with 
one pen. On the other hand, they apparently saw no objec- 
tion to inserting contributions from outside as their own; 
for they speak of the dissatisfaction of certain contributors 
who had failed to appreciate the signal honor of having 
their effusions presented as the work of Bavius. Of what 
would seem the perfectly allowable device of publishing letters 
with editorial comment, Bavius declared (221) that it must 
be resorted to, if statements were untrue or if matters were 
“carried too far against any particular set of men.” It was 
also considered within the rights of the editor to adapt letters, 
to shorten, or even to lengthen and revise them. Bavius in- 
forms his contributors in number 21 that some of them “so 
far mistake the very design of this paper, that I am forced 
to lay their letters aside, or take the liberty of making many 
alterations in them.” Indeed, Bavius stated quite frankly 
that where the correspondent was unknown, he should feel 
free to make whatever changes he wished. 

The financial relations between editors and correspon- 
dents seem to have been complicated. The chief complaint 

Tn the controversy with the Prompter, Aaron Hill is spoken of as a 
former contributor. He may be the author of a few articles signed 
“A. H.” It is also probable that Dramaticus, a writer in one of the 
theatrical quarrels, was Sir William Yonge. It is noted by Nichols (in 
Literary Anecdotes, III, 174) that the letter to Bavius on printing, in 
the Journal for March 20, 1735, was by William Bowyer, the printer. 
Nichols also throws light on satiric verses in 32 by Morell, vicar of 
Kew, on the rather presumptuous claims of a new editor of Isocrates, 
William Battie. Morell tells of his surprise at seeing his verses in the 
Journal. He says they were “borrowed or purloined—by one Bickerton, a 
bookseller, who married a distant relation of mine,’ and who inserted 
them in the Journal, in which he owned a share. (See Nichols, IV, 602, 
Dictionary of National Biography, and B. M. Add. Mss., 5832, 29766.) 


The most important of the few signed communications in the paper were 
from Lewis Theobald and Joshua Ward, the quack. 


TIS HISTORY 15 


against the magazines was that they reprinted without pay- 
ing for it, material for which the original publisher had given 
hard cash. It is extremely doubtful, however, whether the 
Journal paid anything for most of its contributions. Its uni- 
formly high-handed, independent tone toward letter-writers, 
and its repeated assertion that far more was received than 
could be printed,’? both point to the fact that the honor of 
seeing their work in the Journal was expected to be sufficient 
compensation to contributors. Indeed, it is clear that articles 
were sometimes published for a consideration. Thus Bavius 
says in a note on the Budgell-Piers controversy,'* “The let- 
ters published in our 78th, 82d, and 83d Journals, taking up 
seven columns, were inserted for nothing, at the earnest re- 
quest of Mr. Budgell; and on his repeated promise to our 
bookseller that he would send him some essays agreeable 
to the design of our paper; which he never performed.” 
Bavius also explains'* that while the editors do not object 
to puffs-preliminary, they do generally refuse to print puffs 
of books after their publication merely to increase sales, and 
that they have even gone so far as to refuse advantageous 
offers to insert such articles.‘* One may judge from this that 


“A plenitude of material is indicated by the note in 53: “Correspon- — 
dents are desired to send their letters for the future postage paid, we 
having received the last year a great many which were of no use to us,” 
as also by one in 66 that so many letters had been received that the edi- 
tors preferred to mention none specifically. But contributors could count 
on their being published if possible, and in the meantime they should be 
patient, and not send them, as some had done, to other papers, where they 
had appeared to slight advantage. Also in 134 notice is given that con- 
tributions must be sent at least one week in advance, and that no one need 
trouble to send in lampoons on private persons; which were always 
rejected—especially one which had been lately published i in The Post Boy 
and St. James Weekly Packet. This second admonition was repeated in 
201: “Our correspondents are desired to send us no more lampoons upon 
any particular person.” It is clear that for a consideration the malicious 
or vindictive could pillory their enemies in many of the periodicals. 

4% See Memoirs of Grub-street, 11, 101 

* Number 140, “Pegasus in Grub-street.” 

“In a satirical dialogue in number 114 two newspaper writers, discus- 
ing the attacks of the Journal on their papers, are made to say that, 
though booksellers liked to advertise in the Journal because of its wide 
sale, it was of no use to advertise books in its columns, since its 
“writers” would attack them just the same. (This the Journal actually 
did in the case of patent medicines.) They finally decide to get Henley 
to attack the Journal in his advertisements in the Daily Journal. 


16 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


not all articles, and especially controversial or puffing ones, 
were published for nothing. As for advertisements, although 
Bavius stated in the pronouncement just quoted that the 
editors were the sole judges in the acceptance or rejection of 
them, it is improbable that many were turned away. Patent 
medicines and quack remedies which the Journal continually 
satirized and denounced advertised regularly in its columns. 
Grubiana, the pirated collection which the Journal attacked 
with its utmost vigor, is actually advertised at the same time 
as “beautifully printed in a neat pocket volume” and as being 
a complete collection of all the poems and “material letters” 
in the first one hundred and eleven issues of the Journal. 
Nor did the Journal disdain the advertisements of the maga- 
zines even while it was furiously assailing them as base 
plunderers. Yet on occasion it could boast of martyrdom to 
its high ideals in advertising, as when it notes the receipt of 
a letter from the London Punch House, offering, in case 
the editors would publish certain verses in praise of Punch, 
not only to pay well, but to advertise regularly.’® This offer 
the editors refused since the verses gave an “account of its 
[Punch’s] excellence in promoting drunkenness and lewd- 
ness,’ vices the practice of which the Journal had never 
recommended. Certainly the Journal was not always as vir- 
tuous as this notice would lead one to believe. 

Indeed Bavius did protest too much. In the face of con- 
tinual complaints of malice, obloquy, and scandal-monger- 
ing, he was continually asserting his innocence of all evil 
intention and his sole desire to expose and destroy the wick- 
ed and the pretentiously ignorant. Six months after its be- 
ginning an enemy begins an epigram on the Journal, “Vile, 
dark, and dirty”’® and seven years later a correspondent in- 

* Number 358. 

*Tn the Daily Journal, July 17, 1730: 

“Vile, dark, and dirty! if thy name and face 

Be like thy work, humanity’s disgrace, 

Well dost thou wear, adapted to thy task 

The Murd’rer’s dagger, and the robber’s mask. 
Proceed, abuse, and scatter filth around—” 


These verses were reprinted in the Grub-street Journal for October 22, 
1730 (42), and answered in about the same tone by L. Gilliver, who 


TES EIST ORY 17 


sists “it has been and is your avowed constant principle and 
practice not to mind right or wrong, the reputations, call- 
ings, interests, and subsistence of men or families or neigh- 
borhoods, but it is your way and resolution to strike at the 
character of one who has not injured you.’’2” In its direct re- 
plies to such charges the Journal was generally cold and sar- 
castic. In this case, for instance, Honestus, who has written 
very much at large, is told that he will receive an answer if 
he will become specific and write sense and English, and that 
the quality of his letter indicates that it comes from The 
Gentleman’s Proper University at the Corner of Lincoln’s 
Inn Fields’’—the establishment conducted by Henley, the 
mountebank evangelist and educator. 

In general defences and apologia, however, Bavius’ tone 
was much higher. In looking back over the Journal’s career, 
he remarks upon the charges of “lowness,’’ pride, slander, 
envy, and malice, which had pursued it from the beginning, 
and denies them all. He declares that the paper guarded es- 
pecially against calumny and slander, and that those who 
complain should see some of the communications the edi- 
tors did not print! Correspondents, he says, found him “im- 
partial and witty or partial and dull” according as he accepted 
or rejected their letters, and abused him for not publishing 
lewd and scurrilous matter and anonymous invective. He 
admits, rather naively, it would seem, that he had published 
some articles from known contributors “which we imagined 
for the benefit of the public, but which have turned to our 
private disadvantage,’ when the writers, having promised 
the paper indemnification in case of trouble, afterward re- 
fused it. Finally he challenges anyone “to produce an instance 
for the first six years of its life at least [the period when he 


offered a reward for the discovery of the person who sent him a clipping 
of them tagged with the dire threat— 

Mark well, what here enclosed I send 

Or soon expect a fatal end. 
All this may well have been a trick to lead up to a communication pub- 
lished two weeks later and signed “S—” (but very probably by Pope; 
i is marked “A” in The Memoirs of Grub-street) on violent threatening 
etters, 

” Honestus, in 374. 


18 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


was editor] of any valuable, useful and good book decried, or 
any ingenious, learned, and honest person abused in it; pro- 
vided only, that no one shall name himself or any of his own 
works, as an instance.’’ Similar statements had appeared 
periodically in the columns of the Journal itself. In number 
49, in a general statement of policy, Bavius declared that the 
Journal was willing to publish statements it disagreed with 
and that any correspondent was at liberty to answer. (This 
was obviously an encouragement to the quarrelsome.) It 
served notice, however, that it would print nothing to pro- 
mote lewdness or to undermine revealed religion; that any 
personal attack must be signed and that no person of estab- 
lished reputation could be attacked in its columns; and that 
while assaults on stupid authors would be acceptable, corres- 
pondents should not dwell on a few faults in a piece other- 
wise well written. In number 134, notice was served that no 
one need bother to send in lampoons on private persons,*® 
and that a close examination of the paper “will clear us from 
the imputation of malice and detraction cast upon us by the 
renegado members of our society, who deal in nothing but 
the grossest calumny or stupidity.” Similarly in number 
221, Bavius explains the necessity of being fair to all par- 
ties, and of toning down too bitter attacks. He says further 
that ‘many persons have entertained a very wrong notion of 
our Journal and imagine it a proper vehicle of scandal,” and 
declares that the paper attacks only pickpockets and corrup- 
ters of taste and morals. 

In spite of these and numerous other declarations of pro- 
bity, the readers of the Journal must have remained uncon- 
vinced. At the beginning Pope’s hostility toward a given 
writer was enough to insure an attack on him. Moreover, 
the acrimony of its controversial manners undermines all 
faith in such protestations. The most that can be said is that 
the Journal probably did refuse personal attacks on obscure 
and absolutely unknown persons, as a mere matter of good 
policy; scandal against better known individuals was much 


PCa vantes 


ETS SEES TO KY 19 


more marketable. One need note only the two striking in- 
stances of the Journal’s attacks on Theobald’s Shakespeare 
and its treatment of that poor wretch, Eustace Budgell. No 
one is going to believe that to a paper of such a marauding, 
quarrelsome disposition justice and truth were primary con- 
siderations. 

In one respect, on the other hand, the Journal deserves 
credit. Most papers of the time were controlled by booksellers 
who had them filled with false news, puffs of their own 
stock-in-trade, and the manufactured articles of literary 
hacks. Of this sort of thing the Journal, except perhaps at 
the last, seems clear. Bavius probably spoke the truth when 
he declared in number 221, ‘there is no paper less under the 
influence of booksellers . . . than ours.’’ Certainly there is 
nothing to create suspicion against the Journal’s publishers or 
booksellers, Roberts, Gilliver, and Huggonson,!® who seem 
to have been little more than its distributors, although they 
were legally responsible for what appeared in it. Various re- 
marks by Bavius in his preface to the Memoirs also give color 
to the belief that he refused to knuckle under to booksellers. 
He speaks there of booksellers who considered the Journal 
“against the trade” because it inveighed against their books,”° 

“The Journal had numerous booksellers at various times, but the 
names of one or more of the chief three, Roberts, Gilliver (“Captain 
Gulliver”), and Huggonson, were always to be found connected with it. 
Roberts’ name appears in the first issue, Gilliver’s for the first time with 
the fifteenth, and Huggonson’s with the sixty-first. The names of all 
three were associated with it continuously from 198 until its end. Other 
names of less importance are Cogan, Jackson, Brotherton, Palmer, and 
Sanders. Lawton Gilliver was at this time publisher for Pope, and was 
elected bookseller to the Society of Grubstreet in a mock-serious article 
in 15, wherein he is referred to as “Captain Gulliver”, an appellation 
which he kept ever after, even in the official booksellers’ notice at the 
end of the paper. Gilliver’s name appears very rarely in the Journal’s 
controversies (he answered over his proper signature a libel reprinted in 
42 from the Daily Journal) ; but Huggonson, who was a Quaker, be- 
came embroiled, apparently on his own account, in a controversy over 
Quakers’ tithes. (See Chapter vi, post.) 

” Russel’s argument here is whimsically ingenious. He says that al- 
though the Journal attacked certain books, the booksellers still remained 
in undisturbed possession of their own books, their property rights un- 
invaded, and the people were merely warned not to transfer their money 


to booksellers. He adds that certain large “dealers in impressions of 
waste paper’ wished the Journal to be subservient to them and shut 


20 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


and makes it clear that the interfering partners who forced 
his retirement were booksellers. His resentment toward the 
species is general; he maintains that bad booksellers are, 
after bad authors, the ‘‘most detestable members of society,” 
and, implying that the Journal will soon die, hopes that its 
sequel, if it has one, will be kept out of the clutches of book- 
sellers and mercenary authors. 

It is unlikely that this hope was gratified, for the Jowrnal’s 
sequel, the Literary Courier of Grub-street continued in the 
path trod by the Journal in its latter years. The Courier in 
fact, although it pretended to be revivified and reincarnated, 
was neither. It represented merely an attempt to keep the 
Journal going by reducing its size—the printed sheet was 
much smaller?1—and by giving it a new name. Many of the 
letters printed were old ones that the editors of the Journal 
had had on hand, and certainly none of the contributions that 
may have been new, struck out in new lines or opened new 
fields. The attacks on Orator Henley, which must have been, 
long since, old stories to readers of the Journal, were con- 
tinued in the same form; and similar targets, which had 
already been stuck too full of arrows, continued to receive 
additional shafts. It is no wonder that the Journal’s earlier 
public failed to come back to the Courier, and that, after 
managing to get through thirty issues, it expired without 
warning or apology on July 27, 1738. 

The final number of the Journal, 418, prepared the way 
for its successor with the notice: 
We beg pardon of our correspondents for postponing the publication 
of their letters and verses, which we do not doubt of their granting 
us, when they shall see them appear in The Literary Courier of 
Grub-street, which will begin to be published next Thursday [Janu- 
ary 5, 1738] by Dr. Ephraim Quibus, Student in Physics and Astrol- 


ogy, an old member of our Society and whose name appears several 
times in our Memoirs. Into his hands all their papers shall be deliv- 


against their competitors. A little earlier in the preface he says that the 
paper “succeeded beyond all expectation” without the help of any of 
the usual [booksellers’] artifices in establishing a paper, “and continued 
opposed and depreciated by the generality of booksellers and their 
hackney authors.” 

™ The last eleven issues return to the size of the Journal. 


LPS BISTORY 21 


ered, who will then give a particular account of the alterations and 
improvements designed in this new undertaking. 


This account was forthcoming as promised. The Courier 
opened: “The Grub-street Journal, having for eight years 
successively acted its part, sometimes well, sometimes ill, like 
all other comedians; made its exit with the last year.’’ The 
writer says that this was the result of deliberate considera- 
tion, and implies that he is in reality a new editor. He lists 
the errors of the Journal—its omission of politics, its too long 
continued controversies, its lack of consideration for cor- 
respondents, and the like. He announces that the Courter will 
accept letters on political subjects, acknowledge correspon- 
dence, and limit controversy. Moreover, “‘the heap of news,” 
(which had, after all, been a successful department of the 
Journal) would be omitted. 

There is little in the Courier to invite comment. The pub- 
lication of old and out of date material is only too obvious. 
Conspicuous instances are a poem on the contest for the 
laureateship in 1730, a letter on Garland’s Dictionary (which 
had been the subject of an old quarrel in the Journal), and 
a letter on mad dog bites®? intended as part of a discussion 
the Journal had carried on during its last year. Bavius reap- 
peared in a dispute with “R. C.” over the moral status of the 
Journal, a repetition of long since hackneyed charges and 
denials, which finally trailed off into personalities and a 
squabble over false Latin; and also, if one may judge from 
the initials “R. R.,”?? in an argument over an edition of 
Tacitus. As for the political articles which were to help bring 
the paper back into favor, they failed to materialize. A cor- 
respondent in number 19 complained that so far there had 
been none, and in later issues the only instances are two very 
obscure satires?* which seem to be attacks on Walpole, and a 
single article on a treaty between France and Spain. A fla- 
grant and elaborate puff of the Courier written in connection 

* See Literary Courier, numbers 7, 9, and 15. 

*8 Supposing that they represent Richard Russel; see the later discussion 


of Richard Russel as Bavius. 
*TIn 24 and 25, and 28. 


22 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


with the first attack on Walpole presaged the final dissolu- 
tion of the paper. This last attempt to stir interest in it was 
futile ; it lasted for five more issues and then disappeared. 

Of the three collections from the Grub-street Journal, the 
two earlier are comparatively unimportant. The first of the 
three, Essays, Letters, and Other Occasional Pieces Relating 
to the War of the Dunces, is a smalf pamphlet of forty-one 
pages, consisting of articles from the Journal for 1730 and 
the first numbers of 1731.?° Practically all of these relate, as 
the title indicates, to the quarrels in which Pope was most 
interested, those with James Moore-Smythe and Concanen, 
and the one over the election of a poet laureate in 1730. Most 
of this material is Pope’s, but a few other pieces, notably a 
highly indecent one on Hottentot ceremonials,?°® are included. 

The second collection is generally referred to in the Jour- 
nal as ““Grubiana.”’ It consists of selections, chiefly in verse, 
from the first one hundred and eleven numbers, and is eked 
out at the end with “Poems, etc., omitted,” most probably 
added to increase the bulk of the volume. This volume was a 
rank piracy and imposture. But Bavius was not of a temper 
to let such effrontery pass in silence. At once, in number 
113, he denounced the book as a fraud: 

Mr. Bavius presented to the Society a book entitled—“Grubiana, 
or a complete collection of all the poems and material letters from the 
Grubstreet Journal . . .” which after it had passed awhile from hand 
to hand was voted nemine contradicente to be a scandalous, impu- 
dent, and abominable imposition upon the public, not containing half 
pretended to in the title page; most injudiciously collected; and so 
incorrectly printed as frequently to have several faults in a page 
and sometimes two in a line. From whence it was concluded to be 
the work of some hungry, stupid renegado member of our society, 
printed and published by some mercenary wretches who are con- 
tinually pestering the town either with pirated good copies wretch- 


edly printed or with their own vile copies containing nothing but 
nonsense, bawdry, or blasphemy. 


Bavius also threatens arrangements to stop “this pick-pocket 
edition.” 
The next number, 114, developed the attack further. The 


* The copy in the British Museum has no title-page and no date. 
*° From number 59. By Martyn, one of the editors. 


CUS AES TORY, 23 


first thirty pages of Grubiana were examined in detail, and 
yielded a harvest of omissions and of sixty errata. Bavius 
also replied contemptuously to defensive advertisements by 
the proprietors and addressed them by name in doggerel 
verses, which he reprinted in his own Memoirs with a note 
that Hughs and Warner were named in the title-page as the 
proprietors, but that other booksellers—Dormer, “who was 
the chief projector,’ Hinton, and Hubbard—were impli- 
cated. Some months later, in number 144, Bavius remarked 
that Grubiana had since been republished, its market value 
having been destroyed, as The Grub-street Miscellany Printed 
for Mr. Bavius. This, he says, was advertised in an obscure 
weekly paper?” owned by Hinton, but was a failure. It was 
then published a third time, with the addition of a pic- 
ture as Faithful Memoirs of the Grub-street Society: Now 
First Published by Mr. Bavius. Bavius declares all three is- 
sues to be the same, and recalls the first, Grubiana, as “a 
spurious, ill-printed book published about three months ago 

. which we advertised against several times.”’ According 
to the description in numbers 113 and 114, this charge was 
true. The only discoverable copy seems to be one of the third 
issue preserved in the Bodleian. The title-page reads, “‘Faith- 
ful Memoirs of the Grub-street Society. Now first published 
by Mr. Bavius. . . . Printed for the benefit of the Grub- 
street Society and sold by the booksellers of London and 
Westminster, 1732.” Its running title, however, is Grubiana; 
and at the end are to be found the advertisements of Dormer 
and Hinton. 

Bavius had at once taken other steps against this pirated 
collection. In number 115 he gave notice that ‘Select Mem- 
oirs of the Society of Grubstreet” was actually in the press, 
containing all the most interesting material published in the 
Journal, with additions, alterations, and notes, as well as 
“Hogarthian frontispieces representing to the life the au- 

"The Weekly Register, which the Journal always spoke of as “an 
obscure weekly paper.” The name of Tim Birch, an editor or “writer” 


of the Register, is mentioned in the verses in 114 in connection with 
those of the pirating booksellers. 


24 | THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


thors, printers, publishers and booksellers of Grub-street.” He 
also asked contributors to send in emendations and directions 
as to the use of their signatures. For some unexplained rea- 
son the promise here made went unfulfilled, and the Memoirs 
were delayed until the spring of 1737, the Journal’s last year. 
In number 381 (April 14, 1737) was published the first third 
of the preface?® and two weeks later came the characteristic 
advertisement : 

Next week will be published in two neat pocket volumes, price six 
shillings bound, Memoirs of the Society of Grub-street, being a col- 
lection (to speak in the Grub-oratorical style) of very extraordinary 
pieces in prose and verse published in the Grub-street Journal on a 
great variety of subjects—theological, philosophical, physical, astro- 
nomical, astrological, mathematical, mechanical, oratorical, historical, 


biographical, characteristical, critical, hypercritical, tragical, comical, 
etc., etc., etc., etc.29 


The Memoirs appear to be substantially as planned five 
years earlier. They contain, however, material from the 
first one hundred and thirty-eight issues, instead of the 
first one hundred and fifteen, as in the original scheme, and 
the preface and many of the notes on the history of the 
Journal were written later. Of the “Hogarthian frontis- 
pieces’”’ nothing is to be seen. The ironical dedication of 
the two volumes to Humphrey Parsons and Francis Child, 
the mayors of London for 1730 and 1731 respectively, 
would seem to be part of an original plan gone somewhat 
stale. 

The Memoirs are much superior in form and matter to 
Grubiana. They are well printed and are careful and ac- 
curate. Indeed the only variations noted are deliberate altera- 
tions such as had been advertised in 1732. A few articles 
are very considerably revised, and in many more are to be 
noticed occasional changes in phrasing. Such changes usually 
seem to have been made for the sake of style; the substance 
of the ideas and opinions expressed is generally the same. 


?8'The other two-thirds were used to fill out the Journal’s last two 
numbers, 417 and 418. 

® This advertisement was continued in all succeeding numbers except 
the last four. The “Grub-oratorical style’ was a sarcastic allusion to 
Orator Henley. 


E | <Somceme sess erenssoare saeveesa ones In rr ae 





HUMPHREY PARSONS, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, 1730 
(From Number 48; cf. page 117) 





IPS ATSTORV, 25 


Bavius did not scruple, however, to alter content occasion- 
ally; a striking instance is an attack on Henley in number 
65, which is not only made much briefer but is greatly 
changed in substance. It is noteworthy that revision is to 
be found chiefly in the contributions of Bavius himself, who 
edited the Memoirs and gave up about half the space in 
them to his own work. Some articles, as might be expected 
in volumes of this sort, are reprinted only in part, in order 
to save space,?° and many others, which were considered of 
minor interest, are simply mentioned by title or very briefly 
summarized. In general the selections are well chosen and 
give a fairly accurate impression of the Journal during its 
first years. Most of the material relating to the Journal 
itself, the opening statement of policy, the choice of a book- 
seller, and so forth, is included, as are also the attacks on 
Pope’s enemies, much of the material on Bentley’s Milton, 
and the satires on the election of a laureate. Bavius also very 
wisely included a large number of those collations of news 
items from the other papers together with caustic comments 
of his own which form one of the Journal’s chief attrac- 
‘tions. Thus these volumes ‘contain many of the most lively 
and amusing articles and the most telling epigrams and 
notes of the Journal’s best and freshest years. 

Yet the Memoirs are chiefly valuable for the light they 
throw on the Journal’s history. In the long preface already 
quoted from several times, Bavius gives an account of the 
original purpose of the paper, its sufferings at the hands of 
the other papers, the magazines, and the postoffice, answers 
again charges of slander and malice, and gives considerable 
information about the relations with the paper of Pope and 
the various editors. Much of this material is a repetition of 
occasional statements in the Journal itself, but the sections 
on Pope and the editors offer specific detail which is nowhere 
else to be found, and which, in conjunction with a key to 
the signatures “A,” “B,” and “M,” attached to certain of 
the articles reprinted, and standing for Pope and his 


* For a more significant omission, see reference to Thomson, p. 27 post. 


26 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


friends,*! John Martyn, and Richard Russel, respectively, 
forms the chief source of information about the relations 
of Pope and of the editors with the Journal./In fact, with- 
out the Memoirs our conclusions as to the inner workings 
of the paper and the parts played in its history by Pope and 
the two chief editors would be exceedingly hazy and doubt- 
ful.” 

Still, despite the explanations in the Memoirs, and the 
insistent investigations of contemporaries, the Grub-street 
Journal has always been shrouded in a good deal of mystery. 
As has already been said, its promoters left the public to 
find out as best it could practically all the details of its 
backing, editorship, and management. It was, of course, 
natural in the case of a journalistic venture dedicated to 
personal controversy and employing continually the weapons 
of abuse and scurrility, that the attackers should conceal 
themselves as well as possible, and that the attacked should 
take pains to frustrate their attempts at concealment. Con- 
sequently it is not to be wondered at that the points most 
widely discussed in connection with the paper were the 
personalities behind it—what Pope had to do with it, and 
who its “writers” or editors were. 

As has already been said, the opening number plainly 
suggested that the paper was to be a sequel to The Dunciad 
and that Pope had launched a new campaign against the 

* More specifically, the “A” indicated “the few pieces imagined to 
come from their hands.” It probably meant for the most part Pope. 
Certain instances of anonymous contributions by his friends, Swift, Gay, 
Savage, and others, are not to be found. For instance, of a poem ‘called 
“Pandora” in 56, Pope remarks in a letter (Elwin and Courthope, VI, 
327) that he had seen “Pandora”, which he supposed to be by Swift, 
in the Grub-street Journal. This might ordinarily be taken as pretty good 
evidence of Swift’s authorship, but in the Memoirs the poem is unascrib- 
ed. It seems reasonable to assume that Bavius would have marked “A” 
anything he could, for the sake of the obvious prestige. Moreover, the 
poem has never been assigned to Swift by his modern editors. See 
post, p. 33. 

* Tn addition to the three volumes of extracts described, there is extant 
(in the Bodleian) The Grub-street Miscellany in Prose and Verse... . 
Written by Mr. Bavius, Jun. F.G.S. . . . 1731. This small volume has no 


connection with the Grub-street Journal. It is very poor stuff bolstered 
with the names Grubstreet and Bavius. 


LE SELES BO keV 27. 


Dunces.?? This suspicion must have strengthened into cer- 
tainty with the later issues, with their frequent headings 
from Pope’s satires, their attacks on such Dunces as James 
Moore-Smythe, James Ralph, Theobald, and Dennis, and 
allusions to the opposed camps of the Popeians or Parnas- 
sians and Theobaldians or Grubeans. Noteworthy allusions 
to Pope are, it is true, less numerous than one would expect, 
but what there are make it clear that Pope was for the 
Grub-street Journal the particular literary glory of the time, 
with Swift as an intimate companion—note, for example, 
an ironic allusion (in number 18) to “our most inveterate 
enemies, particularly Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope’—and an 
adoring circle of worthy but lesser lights, especially Sav- 
age,** Thomson, and Gay. This small circle was sacrosanct ; 
there was never any word but of praise for any member of 
it. On the other hand, the old Dunces, and the new literary 
men who were not Pope courtiers could hope for nothing 
but sarcasms in the columns of the Journal. 

A slight but significant episode in the early history of 
the Journal indicates perfectly which way the wind was 
blowing. In an ironic essay®® in number 5 on “Miltonic”’ 
verse the charm of anticlimax is illustrated by a passage from 
Thomson’s Winter. The citation of Thomson to appear in 
the company of the Dunces, and in close proximity with 
that notable member of the group, James Ralph, who also 
furnishes an instance of anticlimax, taken from his Muses 
Address to the King, is indeed remarkable, and one is pre- 
pared for retraction. In number 7, Bavius, having noted 
that some readers have thought Thomson a member of the 
society of Grubstreet because he was quoted in number 5, 
declares that he is not. The passage quoted is the only one 
in the poem worthy of the Society. But to belong to the 

* The dates of earlier attacks are as follows:—The Miscellanies, in- 
cluding The Bathos, final volume March, 1728; The Dunciad, May 
1728; The Dunciad Variorum, 1729. 

* Carruthers, Life of Pope, p. 272, remarks that Johnson in his life of 
Savage, the first edition only, said that “Savage had been invited to under- 


take the management of the paper.” He contributed several poems. 
%® By Martyn, ascribed to “B” in the Memoirs. 


28 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Society, plura nitent in carmine. The greater part of the 
poem is Parnassian. Scriblerus himself in The Bathos quoted 
several lines from an author “otherwise by no means of 
our rank,” and drew his instance of Macrology from another 
whom he styled at the same time ‘one of our greatest 
adversaries.” The point of all this is simply that the editor, 
who had written the offending article, had not yet learned 
who were to be accounted friends and who foes, and as a 
consequence had to make amends. Moreover, when the 
essay was reprinted in The Memoirs of Grub-street, the 
allusion to Thomson and the quotation from Winter were 
omitted, and the passage from Ralph stands alone to repre- 
sent anticlimax. 

The Journal’s shifting attitude toward James Miller is 
even more significant and to the point. Early in 1730, in 
numbers 6 and 7, Russel had cut Miller’s comedy, The 
Humours of Oxford, into ribbons.*® Yet about a year later 
his poem Harlequin Horace** was distinguished by that 
ironic dispraise accorded to Pope, Swift, and their allies. 
In the Pegasus column of number 59 notice is given that 
the poem had been read before the Society and the election 
of its author canvassed. The poem, it is said, examined 
Horace’s precepts and inverted them for the use of the 
Society. 

When the reading was finished Mr. Poppy (who during the major 
part of the time had enjoyed a comfortable nap) raised him- 
self very deliberately up from his chair and after a significant yawn 
which was continued through the company, moved that the author 
might be admitted a member. To which Mr. Maevius objected, 
alleging that though the performance might be of great use to the 
Society yet that the author (like most other critics) had not in the 
least observed the rules he prescribed to others, that his manner of 
writing was palpably Parnassian, and that therefore he was by no 
means worthy of having such an honor conferred on him. To this 


Mr. Poppy replied that the only judgment he could make of the writ- 
ing was from the good effect it had upon himself; that the first dozen 


* See post, p. 206. 

* Harlequin Horace, or, The Art of Modern Poetry, 1731. Published by 
Lawton Gilliver. It is chiefly a satire on entertainments and is dedicated 
to John Rich, but it also attacks literary taste in general, and hence 
brings in alfusions to the Dunces. 


TDS HISTORY, Ae) 


couplets had laid him into a sound and refreshing sleep which he 
looked on to be the peculiar mark of a Grubean production. Upon 
which Mr. Maevius made answer that this argument was very far 
from being in favor of the writer; very justly observing that as the 
performances of our members throw others asleep, so the works 
of a Parnassian had the same effect on them. He moreover said 
that it was his opinion if the thing was strictly examined it would 
be found they were not so much obliged to this writer as they 
imagined; that he very much feared there was a snake in the grass 
and could not help apprehending that he was little better than a spy 
in disguise and was sent by our adversaries, the mountaineers, with 
a design of undermining us and disturbing us if possible in the 
enjoyment of our lowland possessions; and therefore moved that 
some worthy member should be instantly employed to strip him of 
his mask. Upon which Mr. Bavius was accordingly appointed and 
was ordered to make his report in the next week’s lucubration. 


Accordingly, “next week’s lucubration” gave up its first 
page to an ironical criticism of Harlequin Horace, wherein 
the poem is really praised and an opportunity seized to 
attack various Dunces. Among other points the writer 
notices that Gilliver, “the author of much evil to our 
Society by bringing to light the works of our most invet- 
erate enemies, Pope and Swift,” is the printer, and calls 
attention to the names of several Dunces in the dedication. 
He also examines the text, quoting from it liberally, and 
points out the ironical praise of the Dunces and the censure 
of Pope. Theobald especially comes in for a bludgeoning ; 
it is suggested that his work on Shakespeare be published 
with the title “Shakespeare with Additions, Emendations 
and Alterations.”’ This line of attack was pursued further 
after a lapse of six weeks. The author of the poem is 
charged with carrying on “maliciously and heathenishly the 
cause of Antigrubeanism which was in such an un-Christian- 
like manner begun by the Dunciad’’; and Blackmore, 
“Namby-Pamby”’ [Phillips], “Tibbald” again, and Stephen 
Duck are satirized. There is also a tribute to Dr. Garth, and 
at the end an attack on lewd entertainments. This third 
installment is marked ‘“‘to be continued,” but does not seem 
to have been; apparently the editors had more copy than 
they could use, and decided that Harlequin Horace had had 
its due. 


30 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


According to Lounsbury, these articles bear ‘‘clear in- 
ternal evidence of Pope’s handiwork.’”’ One may add that 
there is some external evidence also; although none of the 
articles appear in the Memoirs. An earlier article making 
some of the same points, especially of Theobald, had ap- 
peared in number 40, and is reprinted in the Memoirs with 
the signature “A.’’ Doubtless Pope did have a hand in them, 
but that he actually wrote them himself may be doubted. If 
he did, why did not Bavius reprint them in the Memoirs? It 
does not seem unreasonable to assume that he would reprint 
and mark ‘‘A”’ all of Pope’s work that he could. Still, be- 
fore coming to any definite conclusion as to what Pope did 
or did not do at any time, one generally needs the clearest 
of external evidence. At any rate, it is perfectly plain that 
the Grubean who had perpetrated The Humours of Oxford 
a year before was now become a Parnassian.** He had 
written a satirical poem praising Pope and ridiculing the 
Dunces, a poem whose adulation Pope accepted complacently, 
for he wrote to Caryll, February 6, 1731, that it had “a 
great deal of humour.’’ He might with due modesty have 
said of it and its author what he said in the same letter of 
Walter Harte and his Essay upon Satire, which is in the 
same vein of adulation, ‘“‘a very valuable young man, but 
it compliments me too much.” 

Allusions to Pope’s friends, however, are few; the chief 
business of the Journal was attack. Pope’s epitaph on Fenton 
was reprinted (number 43) and occasionally one finds 
verses by ‘“‘a Popeian’’; for instance Savage’s lines “To 
Mrs. Pritchard, on her appearance on the stage.” The 
Journal occasionally took Swift’s part when he was under 
attack. When the Daily Journal for May 2, 1730, published 


It may be asked why, in such a case, the earlier attacks on The 
Humours of Oxford were not excluded from the Memoirs as was the 
allusion to Thomson. The answer may be simply that Russel, their 
author, and the editor of the Memoirs, was obviously partial to his own 
work. It may be surmised, moreover, that his feelings toward Miller, who 
probably supplanted him in the seat of Bavius after 1735, were none of 
the most tender. The allusion to Thomson, on the other hand, was an 
obvious faux pas, and besides was Martyn’s work. 


TESS ETSTORY, all 


“Verses in vindication of Sir R. Steele against Dean Swift,” 
the Journal quoted the last five lines— 

Thus S—t, a Dean by O—d made 

A burlesque on his holy trade 

From highest summit of buffoonry fell 


(Loaded with the contempt he merits well) 
For ribald wit, to the profundest hell. 


Mr. Maevius observed that the cadence of the last three 
lines represented in a surprising manner the fall of the Dean 
from the summit of buffoon’ry to the profundest hell, than 
which as nothing could be more profund in place, so noth- 
ing could possibly be more profund in poetry. The editors 
likewise printed (number 216) an account of a threatened 
attempt on Swift’s life and the rallying to his aid of the 
principal residents ‘‘of the liberty of the dean and chapter,” 
and published two poems by Swift himself—the list of his 
favorite furniture and the lines on his own deafness, as well 
as two epigrams on his leaving his fortune for a lunatic 
asylum (numbers 267 and 273). 

To Pope himself allusion is much more frequent. Lines 
of his were used as headings twenty-one times during the 
first two years. He is referred to as a “most inveterate 
enemy,” as in the passage already noted where his name is 
coupled with Swift’s, or as “our professed enemy,” as in 
an ironical rebuke in number 21 to a writer who attacked 
Moore-Smythe as a scribbler, and praised Pope. In number 
215, Bavius himself compared lines from Pope’s Odyssey 
with a translated fragment to show that Pope’s rendering 
was as close to the original and at the same time as poetical 
as could be expected. There are several poems in praise of 
Pope. “A young gentleman of St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford’’®® 
was honored by the printing (number 24) of part of a 
poem, “An Essay on the Dunciad,” whose only virtue must 
have been that it was laudatory of Pope. Of these lines it 
was said that they were “‘likely to be acceptable to all readers 
of taste,” and “it is not doubted but that this specimen will 


*° Walter Harte. His Essay on Satire, particularly the Dunciad, was 
not published as a whole until January, 1731, some six months later. 


32 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


excite the desire of the public for the whole piece, and it is 
hoped it may be a means to move the learned author to 
gratify it.” In “The Modern Poets,” (number 98) a poem 
by “a young gentleman of Cambridge,’ wherein the Dunces 
are abused, and Swift, Gay, and Young are praised, the 
author comes to the climax— 


But who like Pope the power of numbers knows, 


and reflects that “the snarling tribe” may cry his verse down, 
but he is content with the praise of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, 
and Young—‘should he [Pope] but smile—I’d count their 
censure praise.’’*° 

In the quarrel with the Dunces, Pope’s name was occasion- 
ally dragged in; in number 57, of an anti-Pope letter in Fog’s 
Journal, “Mr. Maevius declared that tho Mr. Pope was a 
professed enemy, yet he ought not to have anything false 
alleged against him, that to his certain knowledge several 
of our members had drawn great benefit from his books, 
but the taste of the town was indeed now so much cor- 
rupted that the booksellers offered very little for any copy 
levelled at him.” In regard to a life of Mrs. Oldfield, whose 
author showed animosity toward the poet, commenting sar- 
castically on Pope’s interest in the Examiner together with 
Swift, Bolingbroke, Prior, and Dr. Arbuthnot, and refer- 
ring to “a passage in Mr. Pope’s Familiar Letters to Henry 
Cromwell, Esq.,” the Journal said in number 64, “These let- 
ters were procured by one Mrs. T. who sold them without the 
consent of either of those gentlemen to Curl, who printed 
them in 1727. The author was ashamed of them as trivial 
things, and only excusable from his youth and inexperience. 
See Dunciad, p. 96.” Items of this sort, such as would lead 
one to suppose that Pope from time to time used the Journal 
for similar pronouncements, are now and then to be found. 
The Journal took notice of the controversy over Curll’s pub- 
lication of Pope’s early letters, and when that shameless 
bookseller set up Pope’s head as his sign, published the 
epigram— 

*” Other verses to Pope appear in 104, 169, 176, 180 269, 334, 376, 378. 


TES HISTORY 33 


Curst Cur— besieged by duns to raise the cash 
With P—s immortal Busto stamps* his trash 
So squandering coiners, to retrieve a loss 
Imprint their monarch’s image on their dross. 


It entered zealously into Pope’s quarrel with Lord Her- 
vey, it issued a denial of his presence at and delight in 
Fielding’s Pasquin, and it published the poet’s own notice 
of the death of his mother.44 Moreover, when in 1737 Mr. 
Bavius brought out The Memoirs of Grub-street, a consider- 
able number of epigrams and articles were, as noted earlier, 
marked with the signature ‘‘A,” to indicate the authorship 
of Pope and his friends, and some of the epigrams at least 
have been reprinted as authentic by the poet’s editors.*? 


* “Alluding to the custom of printing signs in title pages.’’—Grub-street 
Journal, number 292. 

“ See 181. For allusions to Curll and Hervey see Chapter ii post, and 
to Fielding, Chapter v post. 

“The “A” appears in connection with twenty-one issues of the Journal: 
numbers 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29 (all except 28 being items in 
Pope’s campaign against Moore-Smythe, for which see Chapter ii, post) ; 
32, 35, 38 (attacks on Concanen) ; 40, 44, 45, 46, 51 (all but 40 dealing 
with the laureateship; 65, 78, 106, 128. 

In his edition (1858) of Pope’s poems, Carruthers included twenty- 
seven items in verse from the Grub-street Journal. For only eight of 
these did he have the authority of the signature “A”. For one of the 
eight (Should Dennis print, etc.) he has the additional proof that War- 
burton had ascribed it to Pope, and for another (A gold watch found on 
cinder whore) that “Pope uses the same illustration in the ‘Author to 
Let,’ ascribed to Savage.” For another epigram (unascribed in the 
Memoirs) he has the evidence that Bowles discovered it in Pope’s hand- 
writing among the papers at Mapledurham. Thus for nine he cites ob- 
jective evidence. One other item (verses on Tom Durfey) had been 
merely reprinted from Curll’s Miscellany of 1726. The other seventeen are 
apparently ascribed to Pope on internal evidence; that is, they seem 
worthy of Pope, or like Pope. Two of them are signed ‘ MM”, and one 
“B”; the other thirteen are unsigned. Thus Carruthers bore out his 
promise in his life of Pope (2nd [revised] edition 1857), where he says 
(p. 274), “The best of the epigrams in this journal we shall insert in 
Pope’s poetical works.” He declared that he could trace Pope’s hand not 
only in items signed “A”, but “occasionally under the signature ‘M’ and 
frequently in pieces to which no signature is attached.” 

Like Carruthers, Mr. Lounsbury, in The First Editors of Shakespeare 
sometimes speaks with a great assurance, seeing clear internal evidence 
of Pope’s authorship in anonymous items. The position of Mr. R. H. 
Griffith (Alexander Pope, A Bibliography, item 231) is certainly much 
safer: “. .. even with this testimony [the ‘‘A’’] it is difficult to assign 
any of the compositions to Pope himself with a feeling of sureness.” 
Yet it would not seem unreasonable to assume that items marked “A,” 
dealing directly with Pope’s own quarrels (especially those concerning 


34 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


In the conclusions drawn concerning all this material, 
there has been much confusion and error. Although it was 
perfectly obvious from the beginning that Pope had much 
to do with the paper, there was never any authoritative 
pronouncement either from him or from the editors to that 
effect. In fact Pope practically denied any connection with it, 
and its editors occasionally issued half-hearted and incon- 
clusive statements tending to absolve Pope from any 
responsibility for what they published. The earlier editors of 
Pope, who do not mention the Journal at all, were either 
ignorant of its existence or were taken in by these state- 
ments and believed that Pope actually had nothing to do 
with the paper, while later writers have in general observed 
the Pope material and nothing else, and have discussed the 
Journal as purely and simply Pope’s personal organ. More- 
over, all of them, even Elwin and Courthope, have been 
singularly incomplete in their treatment of it, and have 
regularly handed down errors and misconceptions. The first 
student of Pope to betray a considerable acquaintance with 
the Journal was Carruthers, who gives a fairly accurate 
account of it and makes illuminating comments on several 
obscure details.** Of late years biographers of other figures 


Moore-Smythe, Concanen, and perhaps the candidates for the laurel) 
and very like him in style, were in general from his hand. In the present 
work, such an assumption has been made. No item without an “A,” how- 
ever, has been spoken of as Pope’s. It may also be said that though the 
issues of the first four months are full of Pope material, there seems to 
be no reason to believe that Pope became an actual contributor until the 
beginning of his quarrel with Moore-Smythe. 

Later editors of Pope, among them Elwin and Courthope, have in- 
cluded nine of the epigrams selected by Carruthers. Of these, five (the 
second, fourth, fith, sixth, and seventh in Elwin and Courthope) are 
distinguished by an “A”, and may with some reason be assigned to Pope. 
Three (the first, Bee and ninth) are unascribed in the Memoirs, and 
can be assigned to Pope only on internal evidence. One (the third), has 
been discovered by Mr. Griffith to be an epigram of Samuel Wesley, 
slightly adapted to satirical use against James Moore-Smythe. Mr. Grii- 
fith (p. 271) thinks it was originally written against a poem, probably 
of Smythe’s, in Lewis’s Miscellany, but was adapted for publication in 
the Journal against the One Epistle. Here then, would be a case where 
the “A”, for this epigram is so marked, represented one of Pope’s 
“friends”. Pope is said to have secured subscribers for Wesley’s volume 
of verse published in 1736. Cf. Dictionary of National Biography. 

* Notably on the editors, the attacks on J. M. Smythe, and the quarrel 
with Aaron Hill. He also takes an interesting point of view on the 


TSE ES OTe 35 


of the period, notably of Aaron Hill, Fielding, and Theobald, 
have drawn upon it more frequently, and also, it may be 
said, more accurately. But among later scholars the one who 
made himself most familiar with it and recognized most 
fully its value in connection with the study of Pope, was 
Professor Lounsbury, who used it extensively in his book 
on Pope and Theobald. 

But even the impression derived from Professor Louns- 
bury, in spite of his close acquaintance with the material, is 
hardly accurate, probably because, after all, the Pope and 
Theobald material in the paper was alone pertinent to his 
subject. And as for general works on newspapers, or other 
books wherein are to be found passing allusions or brief 
accounts of the paper, all that can be said is that their infor- 
mation is scanty and not very accurate. 

As a matter of fact, the subject is a somewhat obscure 
and complicated one. For, while it can be said without fear 
of contradiction that the Journal was intended at the outset 
as a Pope organ and very little else, that is very far from 
being the whole story. Most of the material which has just 
been described appears in the issues of the first year. The 
farther one reads, the less frequently does one find Pope 
material, and after the first two years items are very occa- 
sional indeed. Thus what had its inception as a sequel to 
the Dunciad, soon ceased to be so, and assumed a quite 
independent existence, with innumerable other interests and 
aims. 

Just what the various phases of Pope’s interest in the 
Journal were it is impossible to determine definitely. Pope’s 
ways were often devious; he did not care to declare him- 
self openly even in the beginning, and even then, when the 
Journal was primarily a vehicle for his attacks on the 
Ward’s Pill controversy, and has noted the change of date of the article 
on the laureateship which appeared in November, 1730, to November, 
1729, when it was added in 1742 to The Dunciad. On this latter point 
see also Lounsbury, First Editors of Shakespeare, p. 389, who notes 
that the article was included in Savage’s volume of pieces occasioned 


by the war of the Dunces and was later included among Pope’s author- 
ized works but dated back to November, 1729. 


36 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Dunces, and defences and puffs of himself and his friends, 
it is doubtful whether he held the reins of management in 
his own hands, or merely sent in his contributions and his 
general directions from a royal distance. That the Journal’s 
sponsors had any confidence that Pope’s hand in the venture 
would pass unnoticed is beyond belief. They must have 
known that it would be recognized at once. It would even 
seem probable that they relied on it as a perfectly open 
secret which would make the paper go well. Pope’s name 
would be invaluable to it; practically an insurance of suc- 
cess.** Nevertheless the editors were apparently never in a 
position to take the full advantage of such a position by 
declaring it openly. Rather, as has been said before, they 
declared vaguely that he had nothing to do with it,*? and 
had to endure Pope’s denials and repudiations, and what 
looks suspiciously like his gradual desertion of them. 

One may well suppose that Pope originally conceived of 
the Journal not only as a valuable instrument to carry on 
the war with the Dunces, but as one which would bring still 
more of the sort of glory he had reaped from the Dunciad. 
He had, in fact, long conceived such a scheme, for in a 
letter to Gay in 1713*® he suggested a paper like the Journal, 
to be called Works of the Unlearned, a fact which his 


“ Bavius declared in the preface to the Memoirs that the paper did not 
depend for its success upon Pope; that in fact those issues containing 
contributions supposedly from him or his friends came far from attain- 
ing the best sales. Nevertheless, denial of the fact that Pope’s prestige 
was valuable to the Journal is useless. 

* For instance, the editors print in 219 a letter criticising unfavorably 
Pope’s translation of Homer. Bavius says he does so “to take off the 
imputation which has been cast upon us as being too partially inclined 
in favor of one particular person.” Nevertheless he goes on to examine 
the criticisms seriatim, and finds them unsustained, childish, marked by 
bad taste, and so forth. 

“Carruthers (Life of Pope, p. 270) speaks of this letter as written 
“apparently in 1714.” In Elwin and Courthope (Works, VII, 412) it is 
dated October 23, [1713]; “this letter appeared in the P. T. volume of 
1735, but was not reprinted by Pope in the avowed editions of his let- 
ters.’”’ The relevant portion reads, “ . Dr. Swift much approves what 
I proposed, even to the very title, which I design shall be, The Works of 
the Unlearned, published monthly, in which, whatever book appears that 
deserves praise shall be depreciated ironically, and in the same manner 
that modern critics take to undervalue works of value, and to commend 
the high productions of Grub-street.” 


LTS STORY oy, 


enemies and victims were fond of insisting on as proving 
his connection with the Journal. The value of such a paper 
conducted skillfully, vigorously, and without a trace of 
squeamishness, was obvious. Still, when it became evident 
that the more delicate, at any rate, found the Journal’s 
manners digusting, and when its victims began to insist too 
vociferously on Pope’s responsibility for it,*7 he evidently 
found it discreet to withdraw well into the background and 
become as inconspicuous as might be in a venture which 
was making itself only too well known. Such seems to be 
the most logical explanation of his letter to Lord Oxford, 
May 17, 1730, asserting that he “had just now seen the Grub- 
street Journal, and disapproved it,” and also of a note he 
appended to the phrase “low Grub” in the Epistle to Dr. 
Arbuthnot, where he says the Journal was “‘a paper wherein 
he never had the least hand, direction or supervisal, nor the 
least knowledge of its author.’’*® It was of course not well 
for a man of Pope’s social pretensions and desires to be con- 
sidered the moving force in a publication which descended 
with such gusto into the miry cockpit of personal contro- 
versy. His statement to Lord Oxford was at best equivocal. 
When this letter was written Pope was just beginning his 
attacks on James Moore-Smythe in the Journal, and in addi- 
tion was, it can hardly be doubted, suggesting and super- 
vising much more that came from the pens of editors and 
correspondents. The Grub-street Journal was too low only 
for public recognition. It is too much then, to accept his own 

* As they did repeatedly. Note especially the assertions made by the 
other papers with which the Journal quarrelled. (See Chapter iv, post.) 
The following by Curll (July 26, 1735; see Elwin and Courthope, VI, 
448) is typical: “As to Mr. Pope’s being concerned in the Grub-street 
Journal, all his denials stand only for ciphers; for one of the Grub-street 
proprietors assured me, that both himself, and Huggonson, the Quaker, 
who prints the said Journal, could testify the contrary; nay farther, I 
know from indisputable evidence, that Mr. Pope wrote a letter to a 
certain gentleman in the most pressing instances of friendship, not to 
divulge the secret of his being concerned in that paper with his writing 
partner, Dr. Arbuthnot.” 

*“He did not always speak badly of it. He remarks in a letter (see 


Elwin and Courthope, VI, 327), “That paper would often divert you, 
though it is very unequal.” 


38 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


implication that the paper was none of his doing. His editors 
have long since ceased to regard his utterances on that sub- 
ject as bona fide; they have erred rather in allowing him a 
far greater share in the paper than he really had. 

After its first year, Pope probably had, indeed, compara- 
tively little to do with the Journal. His contributions fell off 
in frequency, and then ceased. He occasionally used it as a 
convenient medium for advertisement and public announce- 
ment. Possibly he maintained some sort of connection, gen- 
erally passive in nature, with the editors. It is significant 
that James Miller, who, according to contemporaries, had 
charge of the paper during its old age, was one of the minor 
lights of Pope’s circle. Moreover, on the occasions when 
Pope’s name and interests were mentioned the editors in- 
variably faced the east and bowed reverently. Yet these indi- 
cations of a continued interest are, after all, slight and infre- 
quent in comparison with the material of the early issues. 
It is true, the Journal conducted many campaigns against 
men whom Pope had pilloried, and who might be counted 
among his enemies—for instance, Budgell, Hill, Joshua 
Ward, and James Ralph; but it is perfectly conceivable that 
these quarrels, except minor ones with Lord Hervey and with 
Curll, were undertaken quite independently of Pope. Nor 
does the repeated statement by the Journal’s victims that 
their persecution was due to Pope’s malice and animosity carry 
much weight. They were also fond of taunting the editors 
on occasion with having been left in the lurch by a leader 
who had at first been strong in their support, but had aban- 
doned them when he became fearful of being defiled with 
pitch.*° 

The truth of the matter probably was that he did abandon 
them, but kept sufficient control over the paper so that he 
could use it if he wished. Still, in spite of the fact that the 
Pope material is confined chiefly to the first year, it remains 

*° A note to number 126 in the Memoirs points out that one abusive 
epigram quoted charges that Pope was implicated in the Journal, while 


another abuses the paper on the ground that Pope actually had nothing 
to do with it. 


ITS AISTORY ae 


the most interesting and significant part of the paper. It is 
for one thing the most brilliant. Then, too, there is the mere 
fact that it is Pope material and really belongs to the history 
of the Dunciad. Besides, the fact that until lately almost no 
attention has been paid to anything else in the paper has also 
tended to emphasize its importance. In considering a given 
item, one inevitably finds himself wondering first of all 
whether Pope had any sort of interest in it. 

The second center of interest in the Grub-street Journal is 
by all odds the identity of the editors. On this point, as well 
as with Pope, there has been any amount of confusion and 
obscurity. There never was, of course, any disclosure of spon- 
sors or editors; the very nature of the periodical, its primary 
concern in personal controversy, precluded that. Of the de- 
tails of personal organization and management we know 
almost nothing absolutely, and can infer very little. We know 
nothing about the finances of the paper—who supported it 
at the beginning, or who later enjoyed the profits of it. Again, 
although the editors themselves were discovered, it is im- 
possible to say how they came by their employment, whether 
they were partial instigators of the scheme or merely hired 
servants. Nor can one pierce the veil of anonymity behind 
which the innumerable correspondents almost invariably hid. 
One frequently suspects them, along with Giles Blunderbuss 
and Mr. Poppy, of being merely phases of Mr. Bavius, but 
such suspicions remain vague and uncertain. Perhaps, how- 
ever, such obscurities are no more than one should expect 
in dealing with such a paper. It is hard enough to light up 
unintentional and casual obscurities in history, but much 
harder to illumine intentional and carefully guarded ones. 

As for the identity of the editors, the only information the 
Journal itself vouchsafed was that Mr. Bavius had general 
charge. There seemed, however, to be an almost equally im- 
portant colleague in the person of Mr. Maevius. In fact, in 
The Memoirs of Grub-street one is told that there actually 
were two joint editors writing under these names, and that 
Mr. Maevius occasionally usurped the pseudonym of Mr. 


40 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Bavius. Their victims and enemies had long since had more 
definite knowledge of the editors than this. The double- 
headed Mr. Bavius, having involved himself in bitter personal 
controversies with his brother editors of the Hyp-Doctor, 
the Bee, and the Prompter, was described by them in highly 
unpleasant terms and was declared to be John Martyn, and 
one Richard Russel, a non-juring clergyman. 

Concerning the first of these there has never been any con- 
fusion or doubt. He was John Martyn, a young botanist, and 
served the Journal during its first and part of its second 
year.°° His connection with it was remarked on frequently by 
fellow journalists, and is stated as a fact by his son, Thomas 
Martyn, who published a memoir of his father in 1770. 
He was eminent in his profession and is a well-established 
historical character. 

The case of the second and far more important editor, 
Russel, is quite different. His identity has been the subject 
of many confused and erroneous statements, in spite of the 
fact that many of those whom he attacked knew perfectly 
well who he was, and spoke definitely and harshly about his 
history. Later investigators, however, have relied almost en- 
tirely on Thomas Martyn’s statement that his father was as- 
sociated for some years with “Dr. Russell,’ and that they 
wrote under the names of Bavius and Maevius respectively. 
Martyn, the son, also states that during the same period his 
father and “Dr. Russell,’ whom he denotes “‘a learned gen- 
tleman,” were interested together in a plan, which proved 
abortive, of republishing Roberti Stephani Thesaurus Lin- 
guae Latinae.*! This is the sum of T. Martyn’s information 
concerning the editorship of the Journal. It served, however, 
as a basis for all succeeding statements on the subject. Car- 
ruthers, indeed, finds it strange that a botanist and a physi- 

°° Martyn’s signature “B” in the Memoirs appears in connection with 
twenty-five issues, of which only four are of the second year, the latest 
being number 67. His medical and botanical interest is evident, but he 
also dealt with literary subjects, and, especially at first, wrote many 
satirical comments on news items. 


*G. C. Gorham’s reprint (1830), p. 38. Thomas Martyn does not, 
however, say Dr. Richard Russell, as Lounsbury implies, p. 394. 


LE SWALS TOMY) 41 


cian should have combined forces to produce a paper like 
the Journal, but Courthope in his life of Pope®? remarks 
that Pope started the paper “under the management of his 
friends Dr. John Martyn and Dr. Richard Russell.’”’ Occa- 
sionally there appears a strange variation from the original 
source in Thomas Martyn, as in the article on John Martyn 
in the Dictionary of National Biography, where the Russel 
in question is made Dr. Alexander Russel, or as in the cata- 
logue of the Hope collection of newspapers in the Bodleian, 
where one may read, “The writers or conductors of this 
popular paper were Richard Russell, D. D., a physician, and 
John Martyn, M. D., the distinguished botanist.”’ The author 
of the Hope catalogue, being familiar with statements in 
Eustace Budgell’s Bee that Russel was a clergyman, simply 
reconciled earlier and later opinions by the clever device of 
making Russel both clergyman and physician. The confusion 
on this point was cleared away to a considerable extent by 
Professor Lounsbury, who undertook an investigation into 
the identity of “Dr. Richard Russell, a physician.” He dis- 
covered that there were two Dr. Richard Russells of this 
period—one an eminent physician, a graduate of Leyden, a 
Fellow of the Royal Society, remembered for writing on the 
curative effects of sea water and his development of Brighton 
as a resort; the other a man of much less note, a graduate 
of Rheims and a practitioner of Reading. It is perhaps worth 
adding that the latter also has preserved his identity in writ- 
ing; he is the author of two published letters on professional 
etiquette which are preserved in the British Museum. It was 
apparently one of these two physicians, or a combination of 
them—for, as Lounsbury notices, they have been confused 
with each other in biographical dictionaries—that has done 
duty with Pope scholars and others as an editor of the 
Grub-street Journal. The improbability that either of these 
physicians was concerned in the Journal was apparent to Mr. 
Lounsbury. Their special interests and the fact that they 
both lived outside London were against such a suppo- 


Works, vol. V (1889). 


42 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


sition; and there was also the plain fact that all the contem- 
poraries who expressed an opinion on the subject maintained 
confidently that Martyn’s collaborator was one Parson Rus- 
sel with a residence in Westminster. It is on the basis of 
contemporary evidence then, coupled with the fact that much 
of the material signed Bavius deals with theology and the 
classics, that Lounsbury comes to the conclusion that the 
editor in question was, as his contemporaries called him a 
“Mr.”, and not a “Dr.”’, Russel, a non-juring clergyman. 
Professor Lounsbury may then be said to have corrected 
the general belief, due merely to Thomas Martyn’s careless 
use of the title ““Dr.’’, that one of the editors of the Journal 
was a physician named Russel. Yet he leaves the second editor 
a very vague and tenuous shadow—a non-juring parson, one 
Russel, who lived in Westminster. Fortunately, 
it is possible to penetrate considerably into the obscurity 
which hides him, and to discover enough additional details 
of his history so that he becomes, like his colleague Martyn, 
a fairly well fixed historical entity. The fact that his enemies 
frequently referred to him as Dicky indicates clearly enough 
that his name, like that of the two physicians, was Richard.** 
There is a Richard Russell (or Russel) in the Oxford 
records who fits the case—Richard Russell, son of a clergy- 
man of Dallington, in Sussex. He matriculated at Univer- 
sity College, July 9, 1698, at the age of twelve, received a 
B.A. in 1702 and an M.A. in 1705, and was appointed vicar 
of Alfriston and Selmeston in Sussex, in 1710.54 In the 
British Museum are to be found several of his books and 
pamphlets. Two of these, which are anonymous but are 
ascribed respectively to Richard Russel, M.A., and to Rich- 
ard Russel, are 4 Discourse concerning the nature and the 
obligation of oaths and The Obligation of acting according 
Tf one cares for an explanation of Thomas Martyn’s allusion to 
“Dr. Russell,” it may be surmised that he knew Russell’s name was 
Richard, but that for him the name Richard Russell meant of course 
the well-known Dr. Richard Russell of Brighton fame. Or it may be 
that in courtesy he bestowed the title “Dr.” on one whom he thought 


of as a learned divine. 
Foster, Alumni Oxonienses. 


LES AIS TORY, 43 


to conscience, especially as to oaths. A farewell sermon 
preached January 22, 1716. Both these pamphlets are dated 
1716, and the second has a preface to the effect that it is 
intended as an apology for non-jurors. While these are mere 
ascriptions, circumstances clearly indicate Russel’s author- 
ship. There is also a four-volume translation of Quesnel, 
The New Testament, with Moral Reflections, 1719. This 
work is preceded by a dedication to the Earl of Winchelsea, 
signed Richard Russel, and by a long preface apologizing 
for delay in publication because of his hard usage by his 
successor in the livings of Alfriston and Selmeston in the dio- 
cese of Chichester, when he had to give them up in 1716 as a 
non-juror. He declares very bitterly that his successor would 
not allow him the tithes due him in arrears, and that he was 
forced to eke out a living by business, “for which both by 
genius and education I was very unfit.’’ Hence the delay in 
the publication of the book, which had been long promised. 
Under the date of 1732 is an edition of Vida, printed by 
Gilliver and Nourse, publishers of the Grub-street Journal, 
and dedicated very significantly to “Alexandro Pope, Armi- 
gero, Poetarum inter Anglos Celeberrimo,” with the verses 
Vidam sed carpunt multi—Carpere Maronem 


Nobile par fratrum, Maevius et Bavius. 
Carpunt te similes horum. 


and the signature Richardus Russel, Westmonasterii, Idibus 
Mais, 1732. This work had been advertised in the Grub- 
street Journal, number 3—‘speedily will be published M. 
Hieronymi Vidae Opera Omnia . . . ex recensione R. Rus- 
sel, M.A... .” A later advertisement contains the note 
“The edition in 8vo of S. S. Patrum Apostolicorum . . . 
undertaken by the same person, but which has been retarded 
by some obstacles, is now going forward with expedition; 
and as the greater part of it has been printed off for some 
time the remainder will be finished without interruption, so 
as certainly to be published next winter.’’®° Seemingly, obsta- 


In 129, when the Vida finally appeared. It was also advertised by 
Gilliver on the back leaf of Harlequin Horace as by “R. Russel, A.M.” 


44 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


cles continued to retard the author, for this latter work was 
not published until 1746; and its preface bears the date 
“Londini, Die Festo S. Barnabae, 1746.” In Nichols’ Liter- 
ary Anecdotes, moreover, are to be found records of two 
Russels who were apparently his sons. One of these was 
“W. Russel,” a bookseller, described as being the son of a 
“non-juring clergyman who was educated at St. John’s Col- 
lege, Cambridge and kept a boarding house in Westminster 
for young scholars whose parents were non-jurors,”’ and who 
was the editor of Vida and Patrum A postolicorum. W. Rus- 
sel, like his father, seems to have had a hard life, to have 
failed in business and fallen to the state of an itinerant book 
peddler. The second son, James, was by way of being an 
artist, and wrote in 1748 Letters from a Young Painter in 
Italy. He lived in Rome, where he made a living by acting 
as a guide to Englishmen. He died in Italy in 1763.°° 
Richard Russel was, then, the son of a clergyman and an 
alumnus of University College, Oxford. He had been vicar 
of a country parish in Sussex and was an editor of books of 
divinity and criticism. He had lost his living because of non- 
juring principles, and when the Grub-street Journal appeared 
had been without a cure for some fourteen years. He had 
evidently been forced during this interval to eke out an exis- 
tence by some uncongenial occupation, of which he complains, 
most probably literary hackwork. Apparently, his life had 
not been an easy one, or of a sort to improve his temper. His 
bitter remarks concerning his successor in the Sussex living 
are prophetic of his point of view and style a decade later in 
the articles written for the Journal. Indeed, his non-juring 
principles are frequently apparent; for instance he contri- 
buted®* to number 22 a bitter answer to an attack in the 
London Journal on “non-juring Jacobite priests.” In number 
129, he eulogizes the Jacobites abroad, and especially the 


5 See Nichols, II, 505. The only detail in this account which does not 
fit into the career of Richard Russel of the Journal is the St. John’s 
College, Cambridge. Errors in assigning alumni to colleges, however, 
were frequent. As for the allusion to the boarding house, compare the 
sneers of writers in other newspapers (Chapter iv, post). 

Tt is reprinted in The Memoirs of Grub-street with his signature, “M.” 


ITS FIST ORY 45 


Bishop of Rochester,°* whom he represents as a pathetic, 
lonely exile, for their loyalty and magnanimity in refusing 
to accept any of the ill-gotten gains of a fraud and absconder. 
How he came to form the connection with the Journal it is 
impossible to say. Allusions to him as a friend of Pope’s 
by the author of the Hope catalogue, for instance, are hardly 
convincing. For six years, that is through 1735, he directed 
the paper’s fortunes, and thereafter appeared occasionally as 
a contributor. He also edited The Memoirs of Grub-street, 
which appeared in 1737, five years after it had been promised, 
and wrote a very guarded and discreet history of the Journal 
introducing those little volumes of selections. All else that 
can be said is that he was living as late as 1746, when he pub- 
lished another work of divinity. Perhaps it is worth noting 
that apologies for delayed appearance occur regularly in his 
prefaces. It is quite probable that he was pursued all his life 
by grim necessity and that business “for which both by 
genius and education he was very unfit” always hung like a 
millstone about his neck. 

To Russel must go most of the credit for the success of 
the Journal. Martyn, Russel’s colleague, if one is to judge 
from the ascriptions in the Memoirs, was by far the less 
important and prolific of the two; moreover, he retired 
early in the second year.®® As for Pope, he was undoubtedly 
the chief factor at the beginning, but his aid soon became 
sporadic and slight. It should be noticed also that the paper 
did not sink with Pope’s defection. On the other hand, its 
vogue seems to have increased steadily. Certainly for four 
or five years it continued to flourish with undiminished 
vigor, and Russel’s should be the praise. The Vicar, as he 
was called, had a pen of remarkable skill in controversy. 

“In the One Epistle, abusive of Pope (see Chapter ii, post), the Bishop 
of Rochester is referred to as a “plague of all churches”, This is noted 
by Russel (“M”) in number 22, where he also compliments a writer 
in Fog’s Journal on vindicating the bishop. 

° The signature “M” appears in ninety-eight, or approximately three- 
quarters, of the issues covered by the Memoirs. Pope’s “A” and Mar- 


tyn’s “B”, as has been noted earlier, appeared in twenty-one and twenty- 
five issues respectively. 


46 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


He was certainly not a great writer nor a man of fine quali- 
ties or noble feelings, but for conducting journalistic quar- 
rels—choosing profitable antagonists, dealing out vitriolic 
sarcasm and irony and subtle innuendoes, in short for carry- 
ing on the business in hand,—he was eminently well-chosen. 
One can hardly call him fair, frank, or kind, but these were 
probably not qualities the originators of the paper were seek- 
ing. They were certainly not qualities of Alexander Pope. 
The Grub-street Journal has always been considered a round- 
about expression of the personality of Pope, but the more 
one learns of it the more one realizes that its peculiar and 
individual tone was set rather by the personality of that 
obscure person, Richard Russel, M.A. 

Toward the end of his consulship, it must be admitted, 
affairs ceased to go well. He complained of difficulties with 
his colleagues and contributors, the pace flagged, and sub- 
scribers occasionally found fault. Hence, ostensibly tired of 
journalistic bickerings and squabbles, he finally announced 
that he had given over the Journal into the hands of a suc- 
cessor, who he hoped would allow him from time to time 
to express himself in its columns. The identity of this new 
editor was not disclosed, but the Journal’s adversaries inti- 
mated that he was that minor Popeian, James Miller.*° 
Whoever he was, he did not succeed in restoring its fortunes. 
Under him its light grew steadily duller and duller, until its 
directors must have decided that it was beyond revival and 
should be snuffed completely. 

© Later, in the preface to the Memoirs, Russel said that since his re- 


tirement the paper had been run by a committee. It is impossible to say 
whether this contradicts or merely qualifies his earlier statement. 


CHAPTER) Tt 
POPE AND THE DUNCES 


After its first year the Grub-street Journal soon came to 
lead a very vigorous existence quite independent of Pope. It 
had many irons other than his in the fire. It was of course 
always reverential toward him, friendly toward his friends, 
and hostile toward his enemies. On two later occasions it 
came fiercely to his aid in squabbles in his behalf with that 
object of his ancient hatred, the scandalous Edmund Curll, 
and with Lord “Fanny” Hervey. Yet after 1730 the amount 
of material in the Journal printed either directly or indi- 
rectly in Pope’s interest is so slight as to be altogether incon- 
siderable. No one reading the paper after 1730 would gather 
that Pope had any special connection with it. 

Yet, as has already been said, the Journal was unmistaka- 
bly undertaken as an organ of Pope. Its chief purpose was 
clearly to proclaim his greatness and to denounce and expose 
his enemies, especially the latter, for its militant attitude 
toward the Dunces and others of their tribe is much more 
striking than its glorification of the poet. Its first issues are 
practically a sequel to The Dunciad. Their columns are 
thickly scattered with the names of Dunces, whom it in- 
variably holds up to scorn and ridicule. Especially noticeable 
as being singled out for attack in this first period are James 
Moore-Smythe, Matthew Concanen, James Ralph, and the 
critics Lewis Theobald and Richard Bentley. 

For instance, in verses on the Cambridge commencement 
in number 28, apropos of “‘iste tuus frater Tibbaldus’”’, it is 
said 

—et omnes 


Popiades Phoebo sua debent carmina: nobis 
Non ita. Quod facimus, nostrum est. 


In an amusing bit of persiflage on the subject of anagrams 
and similar exercises, Mr. Poppy remarks in number 32: 


[ 47 ] 


48 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


In these kinds of wit did former members of our Society excel: 
in the same ways might our present members shine. But alas we are 
too apt to aim at writing after the Parnassian manner; in which we 
can never hope to succeed. Could we but be persuaded to leave the 
pursuit of those sorts of writing for which Nature has by no means 
formed us, and apply ourselves to those which seem fitted to our 
several capacities, we should appear much more illustrious than we 
do at present. Then might the labours of the industrious Mr. Theo- 
bald be well spent on anagrams, the quaint conceits of the inventive 
Mr. Smith might be properly bestowed on chronograms, and the 
ingenious Mr. Ralph might appear’to a better advantage in the 
confinement of an acrostick than he does at present in the loose 
pindarick. 


Against the five writers mentioned above the Journal con- 
ducted what may justly be described as consistent campaigns, 
running over considerable periods of time. Other Dunces, 
however, are mentioned in scattered or sporadic news items, 
epigrams or satirical essays. Among these, Daniel Defoe and 
John Dennis, the critic, are the subjects of the most sig- 
nificant allusions. 

Satire on Defoe appears but twice, both instances, however, 
being interesting in view of the fact that the whirligig of 
time has finally cast the erstwhile Dunce and yellow jour- 
nalist into the very front rank of eighteenth-century writers. 
The first remarks appear in number 69 on the event of his 
death. 

On Monday in the evening died at his lodgings in Rope Makers 
Alley in Moorfields, the famous Mr. Daniel Defoe, in a very ad- 
vanced age. Daily Courant.—It is no small comfort to me that my 
brother died in a [good] old age in a place made famous by the 
decease of several of our members; having kept himself out of the 
dangerous alleys of those high-flying rope-makers who would fain 


have sent him long ago to his long home, by the shortest way with 
the dissenters. 


In the Pegasus column of the same issue the society’s emo- 
tions were recorded: 


The members were so much afflicted at the news of the death of that 
ancient ornament of our society, Mr. Daniel Defoe, that they were 
incapable of attending to the papers which were read to them. [The 
writer proceeds to quote an anti-clerical epigram] which by some 
was imagined to be the last work of the great author deceased, and 


POPE-AND THE DUNCES: 49 


an instance of his perseverance in his principles to the last, being 
very agreeable to the sentiments which he had frequently published 
both in prose and rime. 


In number 90 the scene of his arrival in the Elysian Fields 
is recounted by “Farewell” in a letter from those regions. 


As to poets, we are prodigiously overstocked with them . . . that 
universal genius, Mr. D- F-e lately arrived raises our admira- 
tion here as much as he did yours when alive. Among other things 
he frequently entertains us with accounts of the various ways of 
diverting the living world with newspapers, an amusement alto- 
gether unknown in the age of Augustus. He assures us that he him- 
self at one and the same time wrote two celebrated papers, one on 
the Whig and one on the Tory side, with which each party were 
extremely well pleased. He likewise often makes us merry with the 
dexterity and management of booksellers in putting off their authors 
from time to time with little or no money, and their heavy copies, 
with new vamped title pages, advertisements, etc... . 


To John Dennis there are a number of early allusions 
manifestly continuing the attacks of The Dunciad. The most 
important of all is the first, in the fifth number. In the essay 
on Miltonic verse, Dennis is cited as a prominent disciple 
of Milton: 


I shall give one instance among many of Milton’s very words being 
converted to Profundity, from your great Dennis. In the poem 
entitled [1 Penseroso Milton has these words— 


Oft on a plat of rising ground 
I hear the far-off curfew sound, 
Over some wide-watered shore 
Swinging slow with sullen roar. 


This has been admired by the injudicious as being natural; but you 
will agree with me, I dare say, that Nature is not to be imitated but 
mended. Mr. Dennis no doubt thought so, when he composed that 
fine apostrophe to the River Danube in his Blenhetm— 


Thou like a bittern through thy doleful reeds 
Complaind’st in sullen and in moody groans, 
Expressing manly sorrow mixed with rage 
While thy brown billows sounding on thy shore 
And swinging slow with hoarse and sullen roar 
Kept murmuring consort to thy threatening moan. 


It was natural indeed to speak of the swinging of a bell, as Milton 
did, but truly poetical to speak of the swinging of the billows of a 
river, and far above the imagination of one who had been used to 
live by a riverside and had no idea of the motion of its billows 
above what mere nature had conveyed to him. 


50 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


The essayist speaks of the general necessity of replacing 
Parnassian by Grubean ornament; while the Parnassian 
would open an epic in a low, unmoving manner, the Grubean 
opens in a very lofty strain, as in Dennis’ Battle of Ramil- 
hes— 

I sing the triumph of that wondrous field 


Which raised the fame of pious Anna’s reign 
Above the glory of great Henry’s days. 


When he comes to a discussion of the typical Grubean figures 
of hyperbole and anticlimax, ‘For the first, let us cite the 
never enough extolled Mr. John Dennis.” 

Awaked he rises from his bed in haste 


And after him in haste the sun arose 
Impatient to behold his wondrous deeds. 


The Journal shot a bolt of sarcasm at Dennis’ critical 
abilities in number 37. In that issue appears a laudatory 
notice by Edmund Curll of a new translation by Earbery of 
Bishop Burnet’s De Statu Mortuorum with derogatory re- 
marks on an older translation of the same work by Dennis. 
The “person altogether unknown” was one “Charles Price’, 
who had sent in Curll’s advertisements. The Journal reports: 
The Society was very much surprised to see an advertisement of this 
nature representing the most ancient of critics as incapable of trans- 
lating a modern Latin author, and more to see a person altogether 
unknown in the commonwealth of literature setting himself up as 
an infallible judge of translation, of whose name they had never 
heard before. Mr. Dennis, Mr. Earbery, and Mr. Curll are names 


with which the learned world in general and our Society in par- . 
ticular are well acquainted—. 


The only notable reference to Dennis as a candidate for 
the laureateship appears in an article on the laureate cere- 
monials in number 46, probably by Pope (it is signed “A” 
in the Memoirs). The author suggests that a large amount 
of cabbage (brassica) be used with the vine leaves as a 
remedy for drunkenness. If Dennis were to be chosen, the 
proportion of cabbage should be large, but if Theobald were 
the choice it could be reduced, unless it could be taken as 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 51 


symbolic of theft.1 A really savage blow at the old critic 
came in an epigram by Pope himself (“A’’) in number 78— 
Should D—s print, how once you robbed your brother, 
Traduced your monarch, and debauched your mother ; 
Say, what revenge on D—s can be had; 
Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad? 
Of one so poor you cannot take the law; 
On one so old your sword you scorn to draw. 


Uncaged then let the harmless monster rage, 
Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age. 


In later years Dennis was left to his own devices except 
on the occasion of a theatrical benefit for him in December, 
1733. The Journal expressed itself (number 208) in typically 
sarcastic verses sneering at “worth in want.” The next week 
it reprinted from the Daily Journal verses in which Dennis 
expressed his gratitude to James Thomson, who had been 
partially responsible for the benefit. Dennis says that he finds 
in the author’s mind all the Seasons except Winter, which 
was drawn from him himself— 


Leafless and whit’ning in a cold decay. 


To this the Journal rather heartlessly joined the couplet— 


I’m glad to find my brother’s grateful lay 
Like medlar fruit, delicious in decay. 


The discussion of the competition for the laureateship in 
the fall of 1730 abounds in names of aspirants already made 
famous in the verses of The Dunciad. The names of new 
luminaries, however, also appear. Typical of the treatment 
they received is that meted out to Stephen Duck, the Wilt- 
shire thresher-poet, whom the Journal frequently found 
amusing during 1730 and 1731. Duck’s rustic genius having 
attracted the attention of influential patrons, he had been 
brought to London, where he had soon come to be a pet at 
court, enjoying the favor of no less a person than the Queen 

* Note allusions to Theobald later in this chapter. 

* Note, however, “A Prologue by Mr. Pope, to a play for Mr. Dennis’ 
benefit, in 1733, when he was old, blind, and in great distress, a little 


before his death.” A strange contrast to the epigram in 78, although the 
tone of the prologue is not exactly that of friendship and reverence. 


ape THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


herself. This good fortune naturally enough led to his being 
considered a very probable successor to Eusden. He was of 
course always treated with contempt by the Journal, a con- 
tempt which usually expressed itself in condescending sar- 
casm. That Pope himself was interested in the paper’s attacks 
on the various candidates for the laureateship is perfectly 
obvious, and there can be little doubt that at the very least 
he concurred in the editor’s attitude toward Duck, who, 
along with his fellow poetasters, Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, 
and Concanen, was suffering from the Journal’s mockery. 
Publicly, however, Pope pretended to be a friend of the 
Wiltshire thresher, although he never expressed enthusiasm 
over his verse. Pope’s friends, moreover, were irritated by 
the foolish adulation paid Duck at court.? Pope’s public 
professions and private feelings were often different things, 
and it is hard to make his expressed regard for the person 
of the rustic rhymer square with the summary treatment of 
him in the Journal, which was never hard on Pope’s friends. 

The Journal’s first significant mention of Duck comes in 
two poems in number 40, October 8, 1730. The first of these, 
consisting of thirty lines of doggerel, begins— 


O Duck, preferred by bounteous Queen 
To cackle verse on Richmond Green, 


In the second, “To Mr. Stephen Duck, the celebrated Wilt- 
shire poet and thresher on his late preferment by her Majesty” 
the writer compares Homer’s hard life as a wandering 
minstrel and Milton’s poverty with Duck’s easy rise to fame 
and fortune and compliments him on the Queen’s favors. 
The final stanza runs— 

O may she still new favours grant 

And make the laurel thine. 


Then shall we see next New Year’s Ode 
By far the last outshine. 


* See Dictionary of National Biography, article on Duck. The thresher 
was capable on his side of rendering grateful homage to the poet. In 
The Beautiful Works of the Rev. Mr. Stephen Duck, the Wiltshire Bard 
(1753, edited by J. Spence) are “Lines on Richmond”, written in 1731 
and containing a flattering allusion to Pope. 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 53 


This number also contains a puff of one James Drake, em- 
ployed on a small boat, who had written some poetry but 
had failed to attract patronage or to achieve the honor of 
publication. Several specimens of his genius, perfectly con- 
ventional and platitudinous, but at any rate smoother than 
Duck’s, are brought forward to prove that his claims are 
equal to those of the thresher. In spite of the fact that the 
style throughout is perfectly serious and that Mr. Drake’s 
lines contain a compliment to Pope, a communication at this 
time in favor of a ‘““Drake’”’ must have been a hoax. Accord- 
ing to the editors the writer was unknown to them, but their 
own attitude is indicated in a notice signed Bavius, and 
written by Russel (‘“M”’), “Our President, who is no friend 
to punsters, desires our correspondents, if they write any 
more upon Stephen Duck, to forbear all witticisms upon his 
name, flail, etc., they being anticipated in one of these 
poems.’’* 

The next dozen issues contain several epigrams and prose 
articles on Duck’s candidacy and his place in literary fame. 
In number 45 appeared Pope’s epigram— 

Shall royal praise be rhymed by such a ribald 
As fopling C—r, or attorney T—d? 

Let’s rather wait one year for better luck; 
One year may make a singing swan of Duck. 


Great G—, such servants since thou well can’st lack 
Oh save the salary and drink the sack. 


To number 46 Bavius contributed the lines— 


Behold, ambitious of the British bays 
C—r and Duck contend in rival lays. 
But gentle Colley, should thy verse prevail 


“The obvious puns were apparently irresistible, for the next week the 
editors announced that, “Notwithstanding the caution given by our Presi- 
dent in our last Journal we have received several copies of verses which 
play upon the name of Stephen Duck. . . .” And in ensuing issues hardly 
a critic is able to refrain from such “witticisms”; in fact it is hard to 
see what some of the poet’s critics would have had to say, had they not 
had his name and original calling to pun on. 

° Ascribed to “A”. The final couplet was amputated by Carruthers and 
for some reason inserted by itself in his list of Pope’s contributions to 
the Journal. 


54 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Thou hast no fence, alas, against his flail.® 
Wherefore thy claim resign, allow his right; 
For Duck can thresh, you know, as well as fight. 


Cibber having finally received the appointment, the Journal 
showed its favor to his opponent by announcing in num- 
ber 49, “Mr. Stephen Duck is chosen a member of our 
Society, to qualify him to appear with a better grace as a 
candidate for the laurel, in case of a new vacancy; and to 
obviate the objection for the future, which was lately made 
against him.”’ In the next issue, however, it was reported, 
that he “modestly declined the honor we conferred upon 
him, because it was done upon a wrong motive, the poems 
which go under his name having been printed without his 
knowledge in a very incorrect and imperfect manner; a 
genuine edition of which he designs to publish in a little 
time.”’ 

These remarks are, it would seem, a mock-serious allusion 
to an attempt by Duck, or more probably his friends, to 
escape responsibility for the natural crudity of his work by 
substituting in place of the original poems (which had, in- 
deed, been pirated) a carefully revised and edited version. 
The same number (49) contains a letter from “Simple 
Simon” analyzing the beauties of Duck’s poetry. The writer 
declares that the envious critics will not allow Duck to be 
the author of the poems published as his, although their 
quality proves his authorship, ‘‘at least they are such as none 
but his fellow threshers ought to pretend to.” Simple Simon 
gives examples of Duck’s choice of words, his expletives, 
figures of speech, and “notions,” and quotes such lines as— 


The hungry steed 
Neighing, complains he wants his daily feed. 


This jesting was reproved (as far as one can judge, though 
of course the editors were quite capable of concocting the 


° Swift too wrote an epigram ridiculing Duck, especially as the object 
of the Queen’s patronage, wherein appears the phrase, “No fence against 
a flail.” See Swift, Poems (1910, edited by W. E. Browning), I, 192. 
This epigram in 46 is attributed by Carruthers to Pope, though it was 
reprinted in the Memoirs without a signature. 


POPE AND HE DUNCES 55 


epistle themselves) in a letter signed “L. M.’, the following 
week. L. M. maintained that Duck’s poems had been printed 
without his consent and that the text, being very corrupt, 
was not a fit index to his talents. He also pointed out that 
there was no use in talking to Duck in such terms as pleon- 
asm, which could mean nothing to him, and that it was easy 
enough to find errors even in the best writers. He even con- 
tended that the favorable public reception of Duck’s poems 
indicated their worth. To this defense Simple Simon replied 
lightly and whimsically in number 52. He denied the last 
argument absolutely, pointing out that it was exactly the 
erratic quality of public taste that the Grub-street Journal was 
trying to correct. He also called attention to the fact that 
the ‘““Duckisms” he had noted were not the sort of thing that 
could be explained away as printer’s errors, and that like- 
wise such corrections as had been made were quite worthy 
of Duck’s genius. The editors supported this letter with a 
pretended reproof of Simple Simon for his hardness toward 
Duck, and appended a list of advertisements, in which ap- 
parently they took little stock, wherein Duck repudiated the 
edition under discussion, denied the authorship of some of 
the poems, and set forth a confession by a book-seller, who 
begged pardon of Duck and the public for his imposture. 

A somewhat more serious criticism of Duck, at least in 
pretense, appears in number 55, where Bavius (in this case 
Martyn) takes Duck as a text for an essay on the dangers 
arising from the increase in the numbers of poets. The city, 
he declares, is full of poets, for every man is coming to be 
persuaded of his poetical abilities. He cites the example of 
a weaver who has burst into song, with the explanation— 


Thy fortune, Duck, affects my kinder’d [sic] mind— 


and implies that royalty and the aristocracy should not en- 
courage such people and lead them to give up their proper 
occupations. He culls many flowers from such poets; the 
brightest perhaps from a plagiarism of Sylvester’s Du 
Bartas— 


56 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


The bald-pate trees are periwigged with snow 

Which nature from the hidebound clouds lets go. 
In conclusion he speaks of the Royal Society’s rules for 
limiting its membership because of the propensity of so many 
to consider themselves philosophers, and fears that the Grub- 
street Society may be brought to the same pass. 

An attack from still another angle was made in number 
57. An “obscure weekly paper” (the Weekly Register) had 
printed an epigram on Cibber and Duck, and Fog’s Journal 
for January 30, 1731 had also put forth a violently abusive 
burlesque ‘“‘Letter from Stephen Duck to Mr. C—y K—er, 
poet laureate.” This letter had been sent to Fog’s by one “D. 
T.”, who said a reliable friend of his had seen the original 
and had thought it ought to be published at once, “lest it be 
suppressed forever.’’ The Journal’s editors report the pain of 
some of the members who say that they cannot bear to see 
one of the best and most illustrious of their brethren fallen 
upon thus. 

The public interest in Duck as candidate for the laurel 
had probably died by this time; at any rate, except for a 
few scattered allusions, he appeared no more in the Journal. 
A few casual items, however, show that he was still re- 
garded as one of the Grubean Society. In number 74, the 
editor reprinted from the Daily Post the news that the 
thresher-poet was being taught Latin by one of the royal 
chaplains, and remarked, “I fear his learning Latin at this 
time will hinder his poetical flights, and wish that he would 
rather learn English.” A year later (number 138) “Hobbinal 
Lubbin’, in applying to the Society for membership, de- 
scribes himself as “a great overgrown boy at a country free 
school” and asks whether they have yet admitted his “lucky 
kinsman, Mr. Stephen Duck.” Again in number 289 in a de- 
scription of a new capitol of Grubstreet, he is assigned a 
post outside the door of the laureate, there to stand on guard 
with his flail against the approach of Parnassian enemies. 
Below him are ‘“‘three grand steps,” the Bible, Milton, and the 
Spectator, the three sources of his learning. The only other 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 57 


notice accorded him consisted in printing (in number 393) 
ten lines of verse on the subject “Agar’s Wish”, with the 
note that he had written them ex tempore in a room by him- 
self, to satisfy the doubts of a nobleman as to his poetic 
genius. The Journal did not deign to criticize the verses 
themselves, but did remark, ‘““The person who sent the pre- 
ceding letter and verses by way of puff is desired to send 
the next correcter, or money for correcting.’’” 

The chief value of the Journal to Pope lay in the fact that 
he could use it to chastise those victims who had kicked 
against the pricks of The Dunciad and subsequent satires. 
Pope’s annihilating wit, his pitiless use of real names and his 
key to The Dunciad reduced many of the Dunces to the point 
of thinking silence the best policy. But some of them, it goes 
without saying, tried to do as they had been done by, to 
return as good as they got. Indeed the sum of retaliatory 
pamphlets, epistles in verse, and the like, by various Dunces 
makes a very respectable showing, in bulk at any rate. There 
can be no doubt that in the minds of its founders the chief 
function of the paper was to be the prosecution of this war- 
fare; they were simply to carry on the work of devastation 
from week to week, carefully crushing any refractory Dunce 
who was foolish enough to show his resentment. 

During 1730, while Pope was still an active contributor, 
and in fact the raison d’étre of the Journal, he himself dealt 
with two of his enemies who became violent against him, 
namely James Moore-Smythe and Leonard Welsted. His 
counter attacks upon them form, in fact, the most significant 
and interesting part of his writing in the Journal. 

James Moore-Smythe and Pope had originally been on 
friendly terms, but had quarrelled over some lines by Pope 
which Smythe had borrowed for use in a comedy, The Rival 
Modes, and which Pope himself later inserted in his second 

"For a detailed study of Stephen Duck, see Rose M. Davis, Stephen 
Duck, the Thresher Poet, University of Maine Studies, Series II, number 


8, January, 1927. Miss Davis gives an account of the piracy of Duck’s 
work in 1730 and later, and of Pope’s attitude toward him (pp. 40-48). 


58 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Moral Essay. Thereafter Smythe had been held up to de- 
rision by Pope in The Dunciad and other satires. Early in 
May, 1730, he and Leonard Welsted, another victim, pub- 
lished One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope. This poem had a preface 
in justification, wherein Pope was accused of attacking inof- 
fensive authors, of being actuated by malice and avarice, and 
also of being the cause of the personal abuse in the Miscel- 
lanies of 1727 as well as in The Dunciad. It was here de- 
clared also that Swift never saw the Profund until it was 
published and that Arbuthnot had wished the satire to be 
general and all names to be omitted.* The One Epistle itself 
indicted Pope for plagiarism, lack of originality, and empty 
copiousness, and sneered at him as appealing chiefly to ladies 
of society. The authors paid their respects to “Quack Ar- 
buthnot”, deplored the association of Gay, whom they ad- 
mired, with Pope, asserting that Gay “gives his foes his 
fame, and bears their sins,” raked up the old story of Pope’s 
imposition on Broome, and ended with denunciation of Swift 
for sacrificing all his sacred duties to his love for Vanessa. 

Smythe was soon made to realize afresh what it meant to 
incur Pope’s hatred. A frontal assault of this fashion de- 
manded retaliation, and received it in a series of prose 
articles and epigrams beginning in the Grub-street Journal, 
number 19, May 14, 1730. The first entry is in the form of 
a letter® signed “Jemmy M—r Sm———,,” wherein the 
“author” declares that he will be more scurrilous and dull 
than anyone else. He will abuse Pope and Arbuthnot per- 
sonally, because they have not abused him. “We [Smythe 
etc.] call ourselves gentlemen, because one is the son of 
an alehouse keeper, one the son of a footman, and one the 
son of a .’ The defense was further maintained in 


® The author continues, however, “I cannot indeed say much in praise 
of some performances which appeared against him, and am sorry that 
volunteers entered into the war whom I could wish to have been only 
spectators. But the cause became so general that some gentlemen who 
never aimed at the laurel grew poets merely upon their being angry. A 
militia in case of public invasion may perhaps be thought necessary, but 
yet one could always wish for an army of regular troops.” 

® Ascribed in the Memoirs to “A” (Pope), as are also the “Answer” 
in 20, and the epigrams in 21. These are the first ascriptions to ‘‘A.” 





POPEVAND TAE DUNCES 59 


the next issue by specific rebuttal. Here are disposed of 
the charges that the Duke of Buckingham since becoming 
acquainted with Pope had stopped payment of a pension to 
Charles Gildon and that the Archbishop of Canterbury had 
censured the poet. The defender asks various direct ques- 
tions in connection with other charges: Has Pope ever 
spoken in friendly fashion to or of the infamous Colonel 
Chartres? Was he ever at variance with Fenton? Did 
Broome complain of Pope’s treatment of him in regard to the 
money derived from the translation of the Odyssey? Has 
Pope ever discouraged any young writer of merit? Was he 
ever lewd, drunk, in debt, etc.? Was he ever avaricious? The 
writer declares that whoever can prove these things shall re- 
ceive the panegyrics of all the Grubstreet Society. In con- 
clusion he speaks of the malicious denomination of Swift 
and Arbuthnot as Pedant and Quack. Still another long blast 
came in number 21, this time from Russel (“M’’). 


The Theobaldians who had been driven out of the field the last 
campaign by the publication of the Dunciad opened this at the 
beginning of this month with the publication of the One Epistle to 
Mr. A. Pope. An abstract of the contents of the preface to this 
epistle, sent us by a Popeian was published in our Journal, May 14. 
In the Daily Journal of May 16, was published the following epi- 
gram by a Theobaldian. 


Of all thy short lived progeny this last 

Has met with harder trials than the past. 

With rueful eyes thou view’st thy wretched race, 
The child of guilt and destined to disgrace. 

Thus when famed Joan usurped the pontiff’s chair 
With terror she beheld her new born heir. 

Ill starred, ill favoured into birth it came, 

In sin begotten and brought forth with shame. 

In vain it breathes, a lewd abandoned hope 

And calls in vain th’ unhallowed father, Pope. 


We should be glad to hear the names of Mr. Pope’s short lived 
progeny, all those children whom he owns being to our sorrow alive 
and in good health; we likewise desire to know what the epigramma- 
tist means by a lewd, abandoned hope. 

In our last of May 21, N. 20, we offered a reward to any person 
who would attest the truth of any of those facts there mentioned, and 
which had been charged upon Mr. Pope in the One Epistle. To 
which we have hitherto received no answer. But instead of it in 


60 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the Daily Journal, May 23,19 there is a complaint against us for 
publishing in our last Journal (which is false, for it is our last but 
one) the contents of the preface above mentioned. Wherein they 
charge us with saying that one of the authors is the son of a w—. 
In our Journal there is no more than the son of a ; the w is 
added by the complainant himself, no doubt upon good reasons. 

The observation about the genealogy of the three gentlemen was 
not, we imagined, levelled against the merit of the poem but against 
the appellation of gentlemen, which the authors had assumed in the 
preface. We beg the favor of the gentleman who wrote the letter in 
the Daily Journal to write his next in plain English, for we could 
not apprehend what he meant by charging us with “pouring out a 
lying spirit upon the genealogy of the supposed writers” of the 
One Epistle. 





To this skilfully abusive letter are appended two equally 
scurrilous epigrams upon Moore, contributed by “the Pope- 
ians,” and ascribed to ‘‘A”’. 


Moore goes two years, and then alas produces 
Some noisy, pert, dull, flatulent abuses. 

So some stale, swoln-out dame, you sometimes find 
Has been at last delivered but of—Wind. 


To prove himself no plagiary, Moore 

Has writ such stuff as none e’er writ before. 

Thy produce, Moore, is like that Irish Wit 

Who shewed his breech, to prove ’twas not besh—. 


Then followed a series of epigrams and short prose squibs 
on Moore-Smythe which constitute perhaps the cleverest 
and most virulent of the Journal’s essays in persecution. 
They are a revelation of the extent to which literary men of 
the period were willing to let themselves go in the matter 
of personalities. The first of these, is an advertisement in 
number 23: “Last Friday at the Prince William Tavern, a 
very modest young gentleman alias Moore, alias Smith, who 


* This article in the Daily Journal for May 23, 1730, accuses Pope of 
malice in attacking the descent of the supposed authors of the One 
Epistle and also offers alleged instances of plagiarisms by him from 
Garth and Dryden. The Daily Journal was often the channel for letters 
hostile to Pope and to the Grub-street Journal. The appendix to The 
Dunciad charges Moore-Smythe with authorship of several letters and 
notes against Pope in the Daily Journal during March and April, 1728. 
According to a note in the Memoirs the author of this particular letter 
was Curll. Moore was also threatened with an attack in the form of a 
second Author to be Let, which was advertised several times in the 
Journal, 21 ff. See Lounsbury, p. 379, and Carruthers, p. 279. 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 61 


had been concerned in a libel against an eminent physician 
had the correction of the cane bestowed upon him by a rela- 
tion of that physician, which correction he received with 
exemplary patience and resignation” (“A’’). 

In number 24, we find “Mr. J. M. S———e” ridiculed 
about his whipping and “‘catechised on his One Epistle to 
Mr. Pope” in the epigram— 

What makes you write at this odd rate? 
Why, sir, it is to imitate. 

What makes you steal and trifle so? 
Why ’tis to do as others do. 


But there’s no meaning to be seen! 
Why, that’s the very thing I mean.11 


In the next issue one learns that Moore-Smythe was stung 
into an appeal to the law, for there is an epigram “On Mr. 
M—re’s going to law with Mr. Gilliver. Inscribed to At- 
torney Tibbald.”’ 


Once in his life M—re judges right: 
His sword and pen not worth a straw, 
An author that could never write, 

A gentleman that dares not fight, 

Has but one way to teaze—by Law. 
This suit, dear Tibbald, kindly hatch, 
Thus thou may’st help the sneaking elf, 
And sure a printer is his match, 

Who’s but a publisher himself.12 


These lines are preceded by a note to the effect that Gilliver 
was “served only with a rule requiring him to shew cause 
why an information should not be granted; which he will 
do next term,’ and are followed by an abusive personal 
description of Moore-Smythe, and information that he has 
lost his mind and wandered off. This last invention is fur- 
ther developed in number 26 in a long illiterate letter’? ad- 
dressed to Moore-Smythe by his “uncle,” Dr. Moore, the 


“ This epigram was by Samuel Wesley, and was adapted for use here 
by changing the original “sirs’” of the second line to “sir,” and an orig- 
ve “rant and ramble” in the third to “steal and trifle.” (Compare ante, 
p. 34, n.) 

¥ A sly charge of plagiarism, in allusion to the borrowed lines which 
had made Pope Smythe’s enemy. This epigram was ascribed to “A.” 

*% This letter would seem to be Pope’s, but in the Memoirs it has no 
ascription. The “answer” and epitaph in 29 are ascribed to “A,” as are 
also the items just noted from 25. 


62 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


famous “worm-powder” quack. The “uncle” upbraids his 
“nephew” for having so little to do with his family, com- 
miserates with him over the state of his health and wits, 
and then informs him that the cause is worms, and can be 
removed by a course of the worm powder.'* In addition 
there are epigrams with appropriate satirical comments— 

Said Christ, the man that’s pure in heart, 

And means no ill, for heaven may hope. 

But sure, the bard’s not worth a fart, 

Who nothing means, says Master Pope. 

Critics and casuists, speak your mind, 

Is S—e for Heaven or Hell designed? 

Answer. 

Blest may the man be, by believing, 

The poet’s hardly worth the saving. 
and, ascribed in the Memoirs to “A’’, 

A gold watch found on cinder whore 

Or a good verse on J—my M—re 

Proves but what either should conceal 

Not that they’re rich, but that they steal. 
—the last being doubtless, like other allusions to theft, in- 
tended to recall again to the reader’s mind the original cause 
of Pope’s enmity. 

Three weeks later, in number 29, came an “answer” to 
the letter from Worm-powder Moore. Herein J.M.S. 
made to declare that he has always been against wit since he 
found wit against him. Now he always has recourse to law 
when wit is against him. He admits that now he can live 
only with his relations, and studies law. As for fearing God, 
“T cannot yet bring myself to it; I have still some bravery 
left toward him.” He insists that he never wrote five lines 
of his own in his life, and that no one thinks he is a wit— 
even his own friends deny it the morning after. The only 


“Interesting comment on this letter by a fellow sufferer appears in a 
note from Theobald to Warburton, reprinted in Jones, Lewis Theobald, 
p. 274: I have only to tell you that the Grubstreet continues to 
make a devil of our friend Moore. They have placed him in too ridicu- 
lous a light by inditing a whole letter to him from Worm-powder Moore, 
who calls himself his uncle, and requires him as a madman to put him- 
self under his care; and cautions him against falling under the hands 
of a graduate physician, who wants the management of him. They be- 
sides renew the charge of cowardice so strongly against him, that, I 
confess, I should choose to have two broken arms rather than be so 
stigmatized in print... .” 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 63 


person who accuses him of being an author is Captain Gul- 
liver ;!° anyone who reads of his travels can judge of his 
credit. As for Pope, “It is true I did go with something 
against P—pe (or rather like a puppy carried it to and fro 
in my mouth) these two years and upwards: but . . . got 
nothing by it, and had not got that neither, but for my good 
friend Mr. Welsted.” 

Apparently it was now decided that J. M. S. had been suf- 
ficiently belabored, for the Journal published, to mark the 
conclusion of the episode, an epitaph on the victim with the 
concluding phrase, “ex nihilo nihil fit.” Nothing more ap- 
peared until number 41, when readers were reminded that he 
was “a young gentleman lately deceased,” that the editors 
had already published his epitaph and promised to say no 
more about him. Still, if his ghost appears at Westminster 
next term [to prosecute the Grub-street Journal] means will 
be taken to Jay him.*® One may conclude that nothing came 
of the lawsuit, however, as there was no further reference to 
it, and he was allowed to rest in peace. In number 44, he was 
included with Duck, Cibber, Moore and Dennis among the 
commissioners of the Grubstreet Society to name the laure- 
ate. The editors ask their readers not to be surprised at see- 
ing a dead person in the list—the ode “in Monday’s Post-boy 
must have been written either by him or the Rev. Mr. Eusden, 
likewise deceased: certain it is that no man alive could write 
such a one.” The only notice that he received hereafter was 
by way of announcement six months later in number 65 
that he had settled in Staffordshire and spent his time in 
making “pretty copies of verses upon persons and subjects 
that occur hereabouts,’”’ one sample of which “pretty copies” 
is presented.?” There is also, in number 73, a passing allusion 
to “the incomparable J—M—S—.” 

*® Gilliver, the Journal’s printer. 

* Ascribed to “M” (Russel). 

“Tn 66 appears the following epigram “On Mr. James Moore’s pretty 
verses... printed in our last Journal.” 

What makes for once, Squire Jemmy’s Muse so toward? 
Mere joy to see a cousin of Ned Howard. 
This is signed “Bavius”, but in The Memoirs is ascribed to “A” and may 


be by Pope, though certainly there is no especial encouragement in the 
style to believe it. 


64 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Pope’s vengeance for the One Epistle fell almost altogether 
on the head of Moore-Smythe, although the chief author was 
apparently Leonard Welsted. In the appendix to The Dunciad 
it is asserted that part of the poem came out in folio in 
173118 “under the just title of Dulness and Scandal,” but 
this latter piece contains nothing more than echoes of the 
earlier one. There are enough of these echoes, however, to 
suggest common authorship. In any event, probably because 
his part in the poem was underrated,!® Welsted’s share of 
the abuse fell on Moore-Smythe’s head, and he figures in the 
Journal only as one of the Theobaldians who come in for 
occasional contemptuous allusions. He is, for instance, made 
the author of an illiterate letter (a device Pope seems to have 
used frequently) published in number 40, wherein he asks 
the Journal to print all the epigrams the Dunces send in. 
Pope (“A”) replied that this must be considered with cau- 
tion, for the sake of both parties. It is significant that the 
later Dulness and Scandal drew little fire; Pope was no longer 
regularly using the Journal as his mouthpiece.?° 


** There is in the British Museum a copy dated 1732. “Of Dulness and 
Scandal. Occasioned by the character of Lord Timon in Mr. Pope’s 
Epistle to the Earl of Burlington. By Mr. Welsted. London, 1732.” 
Dulness and Scandal is most abusive of Pope, but concentrates chiefly, 
unlike the One Epistle, on him and does not attack his friends. A typical 
abusive line is— 

Inglorious Rhimer! low licentious slave! 


There are occasional parallels of thought or material between the two 
poems, but not identical lines. The closest parallel in phraseology is— 
One Epistle, p. 18—For thou wert born to damp each rising name 

And hang, like Mildews, on the growth of Fame. 
. . . Low lewdness, unexcited by desire. 
Dulness, p. 6—O born to blacken every virtuous name 
To pass like blightings o’er the blooms of Fame 
. . . Lewd without lust... . 

Seven years later, in The Memoirs of Grub-street, there is the note: 
“This person [J. M. S.] reported himself author, but was only a pub- 
lisher ; it being written by Mr. Welsted and others.” 

Note, however, in 106, a brief query ascribed to “A,” concerning 
false Latin in Dulness and Scandal: Did Welsted understand Latin, or 
were the “second and third” editions an imposition, so that he had no 
chance to correct it in them? 


POPEAND THE DUNCES 65 


During the period of the One Epistle Matthew Concanen 
also suffered from Pope’s pen in the Journal. He had the 
temerity to publish as The Speculatist?* a number of Essays 
Moral and Political, Serious and Humorous which had ap- 
peared in the London Journal and the British Journal from 
1725 to 1727. Two of these stirred Pope’s ire: “On Pope’s 
Miscellanies, November, 1727,” and “On Frauds of Book- 
sellers.” In these essays Concanen accused Pope and his 
friends of abusing Congreve and of inducing other authors 
to father some of their scurrilous productions, and intimated 
that Curll ought to feel honoured at being satirized by pens 
which had attacked Marlborough and Addison. Although 
these scandals were old ones, Pope evidently thought it worth 
while to resent them. Accordingly there appeared in the 
Journal, numbers 32, 35, and 38, a series of three articles?” on 
The Speculatist and Concanen. The first is in the form of a 
satirical letter to “the Speculatist. Mr. M—w Con—n-n,”’ 
and is signed Will Slyboots. It suggests to Concanen that it 
is well for the low classes of writers to think whether they 
have any reputation before they undertake to justify and 
defend it, implies that he has worked hard to build a repu- 
tation and that no one ever accused him of modesty, and 
finally asks him to mark with an asterisk those papers which 
were intended humorously. The second article is headed by 
four lines from The Dunciad, Book II, beginning “True 
to the bottom see Concanen creep.” It is a savage, direct 
attack on Concanen. It declares that the Speculatist is nothing 
but a patchwork of old material revamped from the London 
and British Journals, names C-nc—n as author and calls him 
a scurrilous liar. It disposes of accusations or “‘lyes’’ about 
Pope, especially that he had often been ‘“‘concerned with book- 
sellers in jobs and frauds.” In reply to the charge that Pope 
and Swift had abused Congreve it declares that the remarks 
to which Concanen took exception were published at Con- 
greve’s own desire. The notes to The Dunciad are quoted to 


* The British Museum has a copy of the second edition, 1732. 
All ascribed to “A.” 


66 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the effect that Concanen was “an anonymous Slanderer and 
Publisher of other men’s slanders” on Dr. Swift, to whom 
he had particular obligations, and that this was known to Dr. 
De[lan]y, and can be proved by other men also. Finally, that 
“said C-nc—n is an immoral man is what every reader ought 
to be told ; that he is a dull one is what every reader can find.” 
In the third article, Pope returned to the more usual satirical 
and ironical vein, and wrote a letter purporting to be from 
Concanen, “being an explanation of his first of September 
8th.’”’ Concanen’s “first” letter referred to had appeared in 
the Daily Journal, September 8, 1730. He there asserted that 
he had been attacked with malice and virulence by the Grub- 
street Journal, and answered categorically the charges made 
against him. Most of these answers were nevertheless weak 
or evasive, and a fairly correct impression of them is given 
in Pope’s satirical “second letter” in the Grub-street Journal. 
Concanen did deny effectively, however, any obligation to 
Swift, who “expressed some intentions to serve me, which he 
declined at the next visit I paid him,” and declared that he 
had no further relations with the Dean. In Pope’s “‘second” 
letter, Concanen is made to excuse himself for statements in 
the first on the ground that he had said the same things three 
years before, that he merely said “‘he heard so” not that it 
was so, that in his Irish vocabulary often and once were 
equivalent, that he had never used scandalous or foul lan- 
guage of Swift, but had merely called him a lampooner, 
impudent, malicious, poisonous, and so forth. It ends, “I 
desire you to publish this paper, which must be true, for it is 
my own account of myself.” 

In the Pegasus column in this same issue the editors de- 
clared that they were impartial in the controversy, and that 
they themselves would have been willing to publish Concan- 
en’s letter of September 8, had he sent it to them in manu- 
script, and Pope (“A’’), in commenting on the episode, con- 
cluded: ‘We return him therefore to that obscurity he 
desires, with no other mark of distinction than what the 
[Dunciad] has set upon him, for having the boldness to at- 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 67 


tack his betters, unprovoked.” This brief expedition of Pope’s 
against Concanen was concluded with this third article, and 
Concanen received no further notice from the Journal, until 
his appointment as Attorney General and Advocate General 
in Jamaica. This good fortune, having been noted in a news 
item in number 138, was satirized in an epigram”® a fortnight 
later, in number 140, “On the new Attorney General”— 

Come, Dunciad authors, come to dinner all, 

C—’s made attorney-general. 

Think not this honor a mere act of grace; 

His noble talents justly claimed the place. 


For all Attorney Generals till of late 
Were ever famed for legal Billingsgate.24 


Moore-Smythe and Concanen are the only two Dunces 
who suffered concerted and consistent retaliation from Pope 
himself in the Journal. That Pope was personally responsible 
for the articles and epigrams against them we have the best 
evidence that there is in ascribing authorship to any material 
in the Journal; that is, the signatures in The Memoirs of 
Grub-street. As far as one can judge, these articles on Moore- 
Smythe and Concanen constitute Pope’s most important con- 
tributions to the Journal. In gauging his connection with the 
paper, this fact is significant in view of the very slight bulk 
of the material in comparison with the whole, and of the 
number of much lengthier controversies which could have 
had very little, if any, interest for Pope. Indeed, even the 
later quarrels with victims of The Dunciad appear to show 

8 An interesting sidelight is thrown on the editorial methods of the 
Journal by the reply to a complaint of the author of this epigram that 
it was not published as he sent it in, but was “most scandalously altered.” 
In reply it is admitted that it was altered to improve the versification and 
also the sense. Notice is also served that unless a piece is submitted with 
a real signature, “we shall take the liberty to alter, if we think there is 
occasion, as being the properest judges what may be convenient or in- 
convenient for us to publish.”’ See ante, p. 14. 

* Nichols, V, 534, draws from Akenside some interesting details as to 
Warburton’s partisanship with “Theobald, Concanen, and the rest of 
their tribe.” “In his intercourse with them he treated Mr. Pope in a most 
contemptuous manner, and as a writer without genius.’ Later Warburton 
explained away his intimacy with Concanen as a youthful error. He also 


said that Concanen married great wealth and came back to England ‘‘of 
so scoundrel a temper that he avoided ever coming into my sight.” 


68 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


merely that the Journal was always hostile to Pope’s enemies 
and glad to attack them. During the first year or so Pope 
quite possibly instigated and directed the attack on notorious 
Dunces like James Ralph, Theobald, or Dennis, but the sig- 
natures in The Memoirs of Grub-street show that most of 
the lampooning was actually done by other pens than his. 

The early attacks on James Ralph, for instance, are by 
Martyn or Russel, that is, they are signed in the Memoirs 
either “B”’ or “M.” The first ones, by Martyn, are not per- 
sonal, but merely satirical literary criticism. Yet of course it 
is not too much to surmise that Ralph’s being a Dunce was 
the initial cause for his distinction here, and in fact Pope’s 
interest and the Journal’s bias soon came out clearly in an 
article by Russel, which is quite as ““Popeian” and personal 
as Pope’s own attacks on J. M. S. or Concanen. 

James Ralph,?° an American, and most famous as an early 
associate of Benjamin Franklin, had not appeared in the orig- 
inal Dunciad but had been so hardy as to publish Sawney, 
an Heroic Poem Occasioned by the Dunciad, a crude satire 
on Pope, which had effectively secured him a place in subse- 
quent versions, and of course made him fair prey for the 
Grub-street Journal. The first mention of Ralph is in number 
5, in Martyn’s essay on Miltonic verse, where it is stated that 
in digression, which is one of the ways of imitating Milton, 
Mr. Ralph is very happy. His poem on Night is all digression. 
“. . he begins . . . with telling us, that when the sun goes 
down, night arises, and then it is either dark, or star light, or 
perhaps moon light. Meanwhile (that is, as I take it, in the 
space of one night) 


. revolving time with restless toil 
Through all the seasons turns the circling year” 


~—a comment, which, however prejudiced in its source, leaves 
one doubtful as to Ralph’s poetic abilities. Ralph soon at- 
tracted the notice of the Journal again with an entertainment 
called The Fashionable Lady, or Harlequin’s Opera, which 


> For an interesting essay on this picaresque hero, see R. F. Dibble in 
the Nation (New York), October 13, 1926. 


POPE AND VIE DUNC ES 69 


Martyn reviewed in number 16. Martyn describes it as an 
imitation of The Rehearsal, or a very silly thing in the same 
manner, except that it contained no parody. He holds up to 
contempt the similes, the wit, and the “elegance” of the 
language. Of the songs he says, quoting a line from the piece 
itself, “they are worse than a psalm at an execution, or an 
owl at midnight.” To this criticism Russel?® added a list of 
specimens “‘of polite and sensible language,” the author hav- 
ing told his patron in the dedication that the play was “an 
essay to entertain politeness and good sense.”’ The Fashion- 
able Lady was again attacked in number 21 in an unsigned 
letter with notes by the editor. In the letter Ralph is 
spoken of as “one who would have lived and died in obscur- 
ity, had it not been for the ingenious author of the Dunciad, 
who left him to be hooted at by the Owls.” This personal 
attack Russel continued in the comments with which he elab- 
orated his letter. He repeated Pope’s old remarks upon Ralph, 
to wit that “the learned Mr. Ralph” was said by Pope in The 
Dunciad to have written 


a swearing piece against Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, and him; that he once 
praised himself highly above Mr. Addison in wretched Remarks 
upon that author’s account of the English poets,27 printed in a 
London Journal, September, 1728, that he was wholly illiterate, 
and knew no language, not even French; and that being advised to 
read the rules of dramatic poetry before he began a play, he smiled, 
and replied, ‘Shakspeare writ without rules’. Now though this 
account be very improbable, yet supposing it true, it carries in it a 
real panegyric on this gentleman by a tacit acknowledgment of his 
extraordinary parts. Without which a person not understanding any 
language but English, and consequently not thoroughly understand- 
ing that, could never have raised himself to that eminence as to be 
the inventor of a new species of poetry, a pindaric ode in blank 
verse ;28 a species so sublime that not one person has had the pre- 
sumption to imitate him therein. 


* Signed “J. T.” Ascribed to “M,” as likewise the letter and notes in 21. 
7 Addison’s Account of the Greatest English Poets. To Mr. H. S. 1694. 
*See in the London Journal, September 14, 1728, an article demon- 
strating the superiority of blank verse over rhyme, with praise of Ralph’s 
new ode, The Muses Address to the King. The author speaks of softness 
and sublimity of style, and the fineness of the sentiments of the Muses 
Address, and says no one “ought to be prejudiced against this ode be- 
cause of the novelty of its manner, for it must show a fine genius that 
can succeed so well in a new and untrodden path.” The Journal refers 


70 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Further personalities on Ralph appeared in number 30, appar- 
ently on information that he had attached himself to the 
Weekly Medley. A letter from “Jemmy Friendly, Secretary 
to the Weekly Medley,” and beginning with the lines from 
Hudibras, “A squire he had whose name was Ralph,” and 
so on, states that the writer has been ousted from his position 
by “Jemmy Ninny Hammer, that modest, sweet (or as some 
say) smockfaced, self worshipping prig.” The writer encloses 
with his own another letter signed “J. Ninny Hammer, alias 
J. R.” and addressed to the Weekly Medley, offering to be- 
come its secretary, provided he can manage it freely, and will 
not have to insert anything by Swift, Pope, or Gay. Another 
attack on Ralph followed only after an interval of two and 
one half years, in connection with unfavorable criticisms of 
Gay’s Achilles in the Daily Courant. In number 165 Bavius 
reports, 

It is not without reluctance that we comply with the request of a 
gentleman whom we take to be at least as well informed as the 
author of a letter and of a short copy of verses concerning the opera 
of Achilles in the Daily Courants of last Friday and of this day. 
By two verses in the latter . . . it is evident that the author is a 
latent member of our society. The gentleman’s request is that we 
would refer the author to the decree pronounced against him by the 


sovereign judge of Parnassus, Dunciad, Book III, verses 159-160, 
and to the remarks thereupon... . 


These scattered allusions to Ralph may be justly regarded 
as echoes of Pope’s war on the Dunces. They are none of 
them, to be sure, by Pope, but they continually refer to Pope 
and The Dunciad, and all but the last were written during 
the first months of the Journal’s life, while Pope was not only 
contributing but doubtless keeping in close touch with the 
editors. The final item seems to be one of those very occa- 
sional reminiscences of the original policy of the Journal, 
to this matter again in 120, in connection with ‘‘freeing the lesser parts 
of poetry from that barbarous and Gothic tyrant, rhime. .. .” “Vie 
learned Mr. Ralph undertook this some time ago in his Muses Address 
to the King, an incomparable Pindaric ode in blank verse of which 
proper notice has been taken in our Journal. The success of which speci- 


men of this new species of poetry was so great that no person has pre- 
sumed to imitate it.” 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 7A 


which became less and less frequent after its first year. As a 
matter of fact, Ralph was a much more prominent butt for 
the Journal during its later years than he was at first, and yet 
the later attacks on him seem to have no connection with, or 
interest for, Pope. They are made, not on the basis of allu- 
sions in The Dunciad and Pope’s old grudges, but rather on 
current indiscretions by Ralph seized upon as openings for 
profitable controversies, and treated quite independently of 
old scores.?° 

Early in 1734, Ralph turned his hand to a series of 
architectural essays on London buildings, publishing them 
first in the Weekly Register, and then in a pamphlet entitled 
A Critical Review of Public Buildings. The editor of the 
Journal evidently scented in this presumptuous undertaking 
a fruitful source of controversy, for he published in number 
230, May 23, 1734, an attack on it. The author, who signs 
himself “‘Atticus’’, asserts that the architectural critic “dis- 
covers in his laborious survey just as much skill in architec- 
ture as is about sufficient to qualify a man for a freemason.”’ 
He cites as especially irritating such stock critical phrases as 
“preserves a fine keeping,” and the airy way in which Ralph 
had praised or condemned by wholesale and had suggested 
improvements and alterations. 

The Weekly Register accepted the challenge at once by 
publishing a counter-attack and a general rebuttal. This the 
Journal summarized and answered in number 232 in its 
Pegasus column. The author of the Critical Review declared 
that his work had always been well received and that “this 
very pamphlet has been fathered on some of the noblest and 
most eminent names in the kingdom.”’ Like most angry op- 
ponents of the Journal, he then reverted to the subject of its 
early history. Originally, he declared, it had ‘‘owed its whole 
prospect of success and reputation . . . to an opinion that 
was artfully circulated through the town that Mr. Pope and 
Dr. Arbuthnot were concerned in it as authors.” According 


*® For a theatrical quarrel in which Ralph became involved, see numbers 
174, 177, 178, 179; and post, Chapter v, p. 212. 


es THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


to the Journal, the utmost that ever was imagined was that 
Pope and his friends had at times contributed short pieces— 
never that they had been “‘constant authors.” “If by artfully 
circulated it is designed to insinuate that there was no found- 
ation at all for such an opinion, what grounds has he for that 
insinuation ? Is he certain that neither of those persons wrote 
anything in this paper at its first outset? If he will believe his 
brother, Budgell, one of those gentlemen has been concerned 
in it even at its last outset.” Then, after an equivocal dis- 
cussion of mistaken rumors as to authors, with many rhetori- 
cal questions, the editor goes on to dispose of the Register’s 
charge that the Journal “‘was timed critically in the heat of 
the Dunciad controversy” to make Pope’s connection seem 
plausible. This, the editor asserts, is untrue, since the heat of 
that conflict was already over, numerous editions of The 
Dunciad having appeared, and the pamphlets of the victims 
having perished for want of buyers. He quotes the Register 
further to the effect that the Journal has subsisted on “mere 
love of scandal” and “the hope of something malicious one 
week to make amends for the dulness of another.” To all 
this was appended an epigram on ‘““The Grubstreet Architect, 
Statuary, Painter, etc.,”’ suggesting that he had found all his 
material in Bailey’s Dictionary. 

The following week began a systematic and devastating 
analysis of the Critical Review. Ralph had remarked at 
length on some pictures by Amiconi at Powys House, and 
Bavius was able to demonstrate that he had mistaken a pic- 
ture of the Seasons for Morning, and two pictures of the 
story of Judith and Holofernes for David and Abigail and 
Antony and Cleopatra. These slight errors were likewise com- 
memorated in epigrams, one in this issue and one the follow- 
ing week (number 234). The second one, which was prob- 
ably by Russel (Maevius), follows equivocal dallying with 
the Register’s charge that the Journal was malicious and ex- 
hibited sense only when it was helped out by a chance cor- 
respondent. It runs— 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 73 


The dame so fair, the chief who rough and stern is 
Designed for Judith were, and Holofernes. 

The critic, spite of Scripture, fain would have it 
Painted for Abigail and smooth young David. 

To please ’em both, I’ll own each understood 

His art :—and then the piece is bad and good. 

*Tis a fine Judith as the painter wrought it; 

But a damn’d Abigail, as the critic thought it. 


Allusions to this faux pas continued at intervals, and were 
often combined with answers to reiterated charges by Ralph 
that the Journal was malicious and underhanded, was sur- 
reptitiously the organ of Pope, and so forth—points that the 
Journal apparently considered valuable as advertising, else it 
would have ignored them.*° Ralph aided in keeping the con- 
troversy alive by the most futile and absurd attempts to 
explain away or minimize his mistake, saying for instance 
that one couldn’t have always at his elbow “one of those 
Rotine [sic] Historians who show the Hospital at Green- 
wich, the tombs in the Abbey, or write the Grub-street Jour- 
nal, to enlighten these obscurities and hinder a man of 
imagination from using it where it has no business.” 

The Journal's favorite weapon of burlesque and parody 
was also invoked, especially in “A Critical Review of the 
Buildings, Statues, Vases, etc., in Grub Street’ by ‘“Vitru- 
vius Grubeanus” in number 236. Among other points there 
is here suggested an improvement in barber poles, in phrasing 
which closely follows Ralph’s— 

I cannot deny myself the pleasure and vanity of making public an 
improvement which I have long since planned for reducing our 
barbers into a better gusto with regard to that long party-coloured 
column which their profession obliges them to exhibit to view. If 
this column was placed horizontally, even then ’twould be absurd in 
a great degree, but as it is mostly oblique, it is not only highly so in 
itself, but also spoils the keeping of the whole street. [ would there- 
fore have it erected perpendicularly at two yards distance from the 


door, at the edge of the paved stones, and it would have all the 
surprising effect of a wreathed obelisk.31 


*° Note especially 235, 237 (where Bavius plays with Ralph’s reference 
to the story of Judith as coming from church history), 238, 245, 252. 

* Another phrase typical of Ralph’s architectural style which occa- 
sioned some mirth in the Journal was “squares octangular.” 


74 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


For some three months Ralph’s name went unmentioned ; 
his anonymity was respected. Finally, however, in number 
244, he was called by name and compared with Perault, who 
gave up poetry to become a great architect, while Ralph— 

—with his head so foul and muddy 
Two noble arts at once would make his study, 


And, vainly thinking he excells in either 
Shows plainly to the world that he knows neither. 


Other epigrams followed: one (number 248) reminiscent oi 
a great scene in The Dunciad, the other (number 252) a 
rather pointless squib ‘““On poet R—ph’s studying of painting 
and architecture.” The first is on the text from Ralph him- 
self, “I own myself much pleased with the design of filling 
up Fleet-ditch”— 

Ask you why R— so triumphs in his mirth? 

The cause is plain: Fleet Ditch is stopt with earth. 


Henceforth not Pope, nor all the Popes alive 
Shall souse the bard, or make the critic dive. 


In its ridicule of Ralph’s absurd pretensions the Journal 
was in its own natural vein, and it made the self-appointed 
critic ludicrous enough. Not satisfied with this, however, it 
undertook to dispose of Ralph’s pamphlet in serious and 
weighty fashion point by point, and to establish a satisfactory 
substitute. To this end it began in number 237 a series of 
articles by ‘““Mr. Hiram,” which, despite their judicious and 
formal discretion, wind their weary way through the columns 
of the Journal for nearly nine months. In most of the num- 
bers during this period Mr. Hiram’s name is prominent, but 
he came to a summary end in number 271. Although the 
usual note “To be continued” was attached to his installment 
in that issue, nothing more was heard of him. Doubtless the 
paper’s readers had long since grown restive and had de- 
manded his cutting off. At any rate the controversy died at 
this point, and except for a poem in number 287 wherein 
Walter Harte is defended against an attack by Ralph, and 
one or two other casual instances, Ralph’s name disappeared 
from the Journal's pages. 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 75 


There is nothing in this later attack on Ralph to show that 
it was inspired by Pope. It seems rather to be a new and 
independent controversy arising out of the simple fact that 
Ralph had once more made himself fair game. As a matter 
of fact the only two occasions in its later history when the 
Journal obviously entered into quarrels as Pope’s organ were 
at the time of his squabble with Lord “Fanny” Hervey late 
in 1733, and of the scandal in 1735 over Curll’s publication 
of Pope’s letters. And it is noteworthy that the Journal 
devoted very little space to either of these quarrels. 

Lord Hervey had allied himself with Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu in her famous war with Pope, which is said to 
have resulted from the “immoderate fit of laughter” where- 
with she had rejected Pope’s love. Pope retaliated venom- 
ously in the lines on Sappho in his imitation of Horace’s 
Satire II, 1 of February, 1733. This drew an immediate reply 
in the Verses addressed to the Imitator of Horace. By a 
Lady. Apparently Lady Mary was assisted in this piece by 
Lord Hervey and others.*? At any rate Lord Hervey carried 
on the campaign in A Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton 
Court to a Doctor of Divinity, a feeble but venomous attack 
on the poet, which Pope countered with the vigorous prose 
satire A Letter to a Noble Lord, November, 1733. 

It was at this point that the Journal became useful. In num- 
ber 205, November 29, 1733—almost exactly the time of 
publication of Pope’s Letter—the Journal printed a state- 
ment that Hervey’s authorship of The Letter to a Doctor of 
Divinity had been denied in the Daily Courant of the twenty- 
second, and that the newspapers had been enjoined from 
connecting his name with it. The Journal evinced little re- 
spect for the noble lord’s privileges, however, for in its next 
number appeared Advice to a Nobleman, consisting of appli- 
cable lines from Ben Jonson’s Poetaster, beginning ‘“‘Fannius, 
hold up your hand.”?? In number 207 the significance of the 


82 See Elwin and Courthope, V, 255 ff. and 423 ff. 

% This scene from The Poetaster was reprinted in A most proper reply 
to the Nobleman’s Epistle to a Doctor in Divinity. To which is added 
Horace versus Fannius, etc. Published by J. Huggonson [the Journal’s 
bookseller]. 1734. 


76 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


advertisement in the Daily Courant of November 22 was 
carefully analyzed. It was reprinted verbatim, as was also an 
assertion in the Craftsman of December 8 that it was “a 
pitiful equivocation” intended to prejudice the proprietor of 
the epistle. The attempted defence in the Courant was the 
vaguest of evasions, its obvious point being that the paper 
wished to apologize and avoid the penalty of using Hervey’s 
name without permission. The Journal ironically declared 
itself forced to believe the author some latent member of the 
society whom the world had honored by ascribing his work to 
Lord Hervey, ‘“‘so eminent for the most extraordinary parts 
and learning,” and reprinted from the Epistle the section 
containing the chief slanders of Pope. In number 209 ap- 
peared what is apparently a contribution from a disinterested 
and impartial observer, a vapid and sentimental plea for peace 
and harmony. The writer declares his neutrality, and denies 
personal acquaintance with either Pope or Hervey. He 
deplores the fact, nevertheless, that the one remaining Par- 
nassian should be attacked because of ‘“‘some few ill-natured 
lashes,” and concludes with an idealistic demand that Hervey 
forget his animosity, scorn controversy, and write poetry 
which shall raise him to the level of Pope. 

In these few comments consisted the Journal’s support of 
Pope during the heat of the quarrel. There followed, how- 
ever, from time to time echoes and reverberations testifying 
to the fact that Hervey, as one of Pope’s enemies, was per- 
sona non grata with the Journal. In number 216, some two 
months later, were listed among the effects of a deceased 
author, ‘Brother Fannius,” ‘““A Satire on Mr. Pope, with 
some allusions to an ape, and several ingenious conceits of a 
like nature.”” Hervey’s enrollment among the Dunces of 
Grubstreet was again noted in number 223 in an epigram by 
“R. S.”, quite probably Richard Savage, “To a noble Lord 
on his late most incomparable poem’’— 

Most noble peer, your ever charming verse 
Delights the more, the oftener you rehearse. 


To your harmonious strains all others yield 
Like bending corn when winds breathe o’er the field. 


POREVAND THE DUNCES 77 


Right honorable bard, exalt thy lays 

From princely rising to majestic praise, 
Then shall the world, in spite of envy see 
The laureate’s lofty odes outdone by thee. 


Again, a full year and a half later, in number 287, came 
“Fanny, or Poetry and Paste, a Tale. Inscribed to Mr. Pope.” 
The argument of this narrative is Fanny’s love affair with 
the rustic Trulla. Fanny hangs about the ladies all day and 
is allowed the greatest intimacy because he is considered 
harmless. Cupid finally shoots him, however, and he falls in 
love with Trulla, whom he woos closely, but without arous- 
ing her enthusiasm. In the face of her indifference he under- 
takes to rouse her with his verses, though all his friends have 
told him that they are worthless, and that his attack on Pope 
shows his brains to be addled. Still he reads them to her, and 
throws her into a profound sleep lasting well into the next 
day. Then she rushes off to her baking and uses the poems, 
which he has left in her lap, to line her pie and tart dishes. 
But the verses are so heavy that they keep out the heat and 
ruin the pastry. Hereupon Trulla raises such an outcry that 
the neighbors and Fanny rush in, and Fanny explains that 
Phoebus has merely taken his revenge on the nymph for her 
abuse of his poetry. This fails to assuage her grief and anger, 
and she beats him over the head with a ladle— 


And pelted him with dough along 
Low skulking through the hooting throng. 


The next year Hervey became once more a subject of con- 
temptuous ridicule in the Journal. In number 352 appear two 
epigrams, one “To the E. of B. [the Earl of Bathurst] 
asking who writ the verses against him’”— 

You wonder who this thing has writ 
So full of fibs, so void of wit? 


Lord! never ask who thus could serve ye 
Who can it be but fibster H—. 


—and the other “On the L— H—, by another hand’”’— 


Of charms most lady like possest, 
With not one useful talent blest; 


78 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


How handsome let your glass set forth 
And all mankind, how little worth. 


The following week brought a reply to this “doggerel on 
L— H—” in the form of a couplet to be found on the sign 
“to a farthing pie house in Moorfields, of a couple of mon- 
grel curs snarling at the moon’— 


Since I am high and ye are low 
Ye barking dogs why bark ye so. 


To this the editors of the Journal, refusing to leave the last 
word to a partisan of Hervey, appended another epigram, 
the last shot they were to take at him—lines on a person 
who admired Hervey’s bust at the sculptor’s— 

The sculptor praised,—and praising laughed, 

A pretty figure I profess, 

This is Lord Fanny’s head, I guess. 


How happy, Rysbrack, are thy pains! 
The life, by G—d — it has no brains. 


Aside from Hervey, Edmund Curll, the most notorious 
and scandalous bookseller of the period, was the only person 
against whom the Journal took up the cudgels in Pope’s 
behalf during its later years. Curll was of course an inveterate 
enemy of Pope, and during the first year of the Journal his 
name is bandied about in its columns much as are those of 
other Dunciad heroes. It should be remembered, however, 
that Curll was an object of almost universal reprobation; 
his name appears everywhere in the satirical literature of the 
period and in the other newspapers. He was apparently an 
Ishmael against whom all the literary tribe were eager to 
raise their hands. 

During the Journal’s exuberant and gay first months, he 
was used as a peg for satire in the history of the burlesque 
election of a bookseller to the Grubstreet Society. This began 
with a long letter in number 4 from “Kirleus,” actually writ- 
ten by Russel, asking for the position. The burlesque dis- 
cussion which resulted in his defeat and the choice of 
“Captain Gulliver” did not appear until number 15. In that 
discussion Kirleus’ election was opposed by Orthodoxo be- 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 79 


cause of his activity in circulating lewd books, to the point 
that literary filth had come to be called Curlism.** He had 
found a friend, however, in Pruriento, who proved the great 
use and value of such books to the human race as a means of 
increasing offspring. Pruriento also argued that even Curll 
must provide for his family. The pamphleteer members were 
reported as opposed to his election as bookseller, but thought 
him worthy of election to the society. Bavius himself pointed 
out that probably Kirleus would refuse the post anyway, 
since their bookseller would not be allowed to vend obscene 
or irreligious books. Finally ““Captain Gulliver” was elected, 
partly it was said because of the influence of friends in 
Dublin.*° 

Two months later, in number 24, appeared a notice that 
Kirleus resented the unfavorable action of the society, was 
publicly showing disrespect, and had even written an abusive 
letter to the Daily Journal of May 23.°° The editors pointed 
out, however, that, after all, the proceedings had been very 
much to Curll’s honor, for had the society not elected him a 
member? Moreover, they now voiced their approval of his 
removing from his “literatory” books of antiquities, and keep- 
ing only biography, secret history, poetry, and the like. As 
he looked at these volumes he ought to call to mind their real 
authors and realize his obligations to the society. Certainly, 
“he would find all his wealth and reputation in the world 
were originally owing to his acquaintance with our members, 
who were still willing to contribute to the advancement of 
both.” 

Like all the other papers, the Journal made fairly frequent 
reference to Curll’s peculiar professional activities. Among 
these, his sale of salacious literature came in for occasional 
notice. For instance in number 12 one of the editors, in 
commenting on a letter, says, “The readings which this 

* Tt is said that N. Bailey “philologos” has failed to record “Curlism” 
in his Etymological Dictionary, though he has been at pains to collect 
most of the obscene words used by the dregs of the people. 


3 As Carruthers points out, a humorous allusion to Swift. 
*°Tn connection with the Journal’s attacks on James Moore-Smythe. 


80 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


learned gentleman mentions have been restored in the accu- 
rate editions of my Lord Rochester’s poems, published by 
the learned Kirleus, which are the most compleat and are 
used by the venerable mothers of Drury Lane in their fami- 
lies.”°7 More frequently he is satirized for his ventures in 
“secret history,” that is in scandalous biography and gossip, 
and “‘last wills and testaments.’’?8 In number 29, the Journal 
appended to a notice of Fenton’s death the remark, “I am 
informed that the learned Mr. Kirleus has the life of this 
gentleman (who was a great enemy to our society) lying 
by him, which he will speedily publish with some posthu- 
mous pieces of his, and according to custom, a true copy of 
his last will and testament.”’ In number 167, Curll’s life of 
Robert Wilkes, the comedian, is shown to be made up alto- 
gether of material stolen from other books, and to contain 
prominent advertisements of other lives, “printed for and 
most of them supposed to be written by Mr. E. Curll.’”’ Here 
too in an epigram Sarah Malcolm the murderess is consoled 
with the promise of having ‘“‘C—1 record your life in prose 
and rimes.” Similarly in number 184, a garreteer who is 
hard pressed “‘for a little of the ready” offers for sale his 
literary stock in trade, ‘wholesale or retail—including some 
dozens of last wills and testaments—and lives of remarkable 
persons not yet dead (all these bespoke by Mr. Edm. 
Curl).”’ In number 147 also, two printer’s devils discussing 
the state of the profession, remark on a certain printer’s 
becoming “a much more famous biographer than Mr. Curl 
himself,” and refer to “copies of last wills and testaments, 
which are always added to the Curlean Lives and Memoirs, 
only to swell the volume.” The general opinion concerning 
the hacks whom Curll employed in his “‘literatory” to grind 
out all this grist appears in a brief but trenchant notice in 
number 13. The Journal quotes the news item, “On Sunday 
** Note especially in 105 a list of advertisements of obscene books with 
comment on Curll’s proprietary right in the art of ingenious advertising. 
* The Journal printed in 123 a versified will, to which Russel (““M’”) 


appended advice to Curll, suggesting that he turn the wills to be pub- 
lished into verse on the pattern of this one. 


(LET 4aqunn mo4s7) 
ONIINIUd JO ANALSAW GNV LUV AHL 








POPE AND THE DUNCES 81 


died at his lodgings at Charing Cross, Duncan Camp- 
bell,?® the famous dumb fortune teller,’ to which the Jour- 
nal had to add, “This is the second of the writers to Mr. 
Curl’s chaste press who has died within a small compass of 
time. Mr. Goodburn made his exit lately at Tyburn, and 
Mr. Campbell was decently interr’d not far off, at Pad- 
dington.”’ 

Various tricks of the trade of which Curll seems to have 
been past master are occasionally cited. He is accused in 
number 107 of “republishing” an old edition—“These trans- 
actions [Henley’s Oratory Transactions] are it seems only 
republished, a word of great propriety invented by Mr. 
Curle, who scorns to put off an old edition by putting on 
persons a new imposition under the title of a new im- 
pression.” The suspicion with which his offerings were re- 
garded by the public receives (number 273) sarcastic com- 
ment in a catalogue of “The Lover’s Auction,” listing packets 
of love letters with the note—“E—d C—1 is to take notice 
that he won’t be admitted to be a bidder at this sale, lest the 
world should suspect the genuineness of these letters, if they 
should ever come to be printed.’”’ The same criticism is im- 
plied ironically (number 316) in a defense of Curll against 
the charge of imposition in connection with his publication 
of Pope’s letters. It is said that he has always prefixed his 
name to every book he ever published, besides “a pretty pic- 
ture of the initial letters E C curiously interwoven in 
cyphers,” and that he cannot be charged with deceiving any 
one purchaser, since no one in the kingdom who sees Mr. 
c ’s name on a title-page but will be “from that circum- 
stance enabled to form a perfect judgment of the book.” 

Pope’s hatred of Curll may have accounted for the earlier 
attacks on him, especially in the burlesque contest for the 
post of Grubean bookseller. The Journal was also of course 
acting directly on Pope’s account when it rushed to attack 





°° Famous as one of the subjects of Defoe, who had once done much 
to revive his languishing fame. 


82 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Curll on his publication of Pope’s letters.*° In number 275, 
the Journal together with several other papers printed Pope’s 
advertisement : 


Whereas E. C. bookseller has written to Mr. P— pretending that a 
person the initials of whose name are P. T. hath offered him to 
print a large collection of the said Mr. P—s letters, to which E. C. 
requires an answer: This is to certify that Mr. P— having never 
had, nor intending ever to have, any private correspondence with 
E. C., gives his answer in this manner. That he knows no such 
person as P. T., that he thinks no man has any such collection, that 
he believes the whole a forgery, and shall not trouble himself at all 
about it. 


Nevertheless, the affair grew into a public scandal involving 
appeals to the courts of law and the House of Lords. The 
Journal called attention to it from time to time in news items 
quoted from the dailies, and in scurrilous, not to say obscene, 
verses abusing Curll.*? 

Finally, as a last shot, it published in 315 a letter directly 
charging Curll with imposition and giving cause for the 
ironical defense in number 316 quoted above. This letter, 
which is signed “D.L.”, opens as follows: 


The scandalous practice of prefixing the names of celebrated Writers 
to the mean performances of those who cannot otherwise impose 
their Trash on the world, has, of late, so much prevailed, that it is 
highly to be wished some method were discovered, whereby a stop 
might be put to such unfair proceedings. No one, has, I think, suffer- 
ed more in this way, than the inimitable Author of the Essay on 
Man, nor has any one been more audaciously, or more frequently 
guilty of it than C—. If the considerations of his impositions on 
the publick be not of sufficient weight, it is methinks but an ill 
requital for the pleasure all men of sense must receive from Mr. 
P’s incomparable Writings, to countenance such vile behaviour in 
a Book-seller. How unjustifiable is it (to speak in the mildest 
term) thus to prostitute an Author’s name to three Volumes of 
Letters, the first of which Mr. P. has publickly disowned, and the 
two last can, on no other ground be ascribed to this Author, but the 
insufferable assurance of the Publisher of them. 


“ For the story of Pope’s tortuous course in his intrigue to get Curll 
to publish these letters without seeming himself to have any hand in the 
transaction, see Elwin and Courthope, V, 283 ff., and also VI, 419-48. 
An earlier episode of much the same nature is referred to in 64. (See 
ante, p. 32.) 

“Tn 290 and 293. 


POPE AND THE DUNCES 851) 


“D. L.” then goes on to show that the second and third 
volumes constituted a miserable imposition on the public. 
These latter volumes, he says, contained practically nothing 
that Curll even pretended was Pope’s, but were filled with 
thefts from various sources and with trash from Curll’s own 
correspondence; and as for the promised fourth, that might 
be judged by its predecessors. He concludes: 

Let now any candid person judge whether such proceedings are not 
deservedly cryed out against. The success of the first Volume has 
too much elevated this Re-publisher; yet had he again been elevated 
to a higher degree, and again displayed his assurance in a more 
proper place, it would be but giving the Devil his due; and I doubt 
not but he will meet with it, when he pyrates the volume Mr. P. has 


promised the Publick, as he has insolently declared in print he 
will do. 


This letter is dated, “October 28, for then ’twas written, 
but till now mislaid’’—the date of publication being January 
8, 1736. 

Pope’s name, it is true, appeared occasionally in the Jour- 
nal’s columns throughout the whole period of its existence, 
but it was only during its first year or so and in the sporadic 
outcroppings of its original policy—the quarrels with 
Hervey and Curll—that it showed itself devoted especially 
to the poet’s interests. And it should be noted that these two 
later quarrels, when viewed in perspective and compared 
both in bulk of material and in animosity with other cam- 
paigns the Journal was waging at the time, seem utterly 
insignificant. Doubtless the readers of the Journal soon after 
1730 forgot to think of it as Pope’s mouthpiece or agent. 
To them these later attacks on Pope’s enemies probably 
seemed of slight consequence. As has been remarked before, 
Pope must have been chary of having his name coupled with 
that of an organ so notorious for its violence and ruthless- 
ness. These facts are especially noteworthy in view of the 
well established tradition that the Journal was simply and 
merely his organ and had no other grounds for existence. 


CHAPTER iI 


BENTLEY’S MILTON AND THEOBALD’S 
SHAKESPEARE 


To chastise Moore-Smythe and Concanen, Pope himself 
came down into the arena. Both had been guilty of personal 
reflections against him, and their correction he took into his 
own hands. There can be little doubt that his resentment 
against Lewis Theobald as the author of Shakespeare Re- 
stored was as great as against a man like Moore-Smythe, but 
nevertheless he seems to have left him, together with Rich- 
ard Bentley, who was preparing his edition of Milton when 
the Journal first appeared, to be dealt with by others.1 One 
need not conclude, however, that Pope held himself entirely 
aloof when Bentley and Theobald were concerned; he proba- 
bly had much to do with instigating and supervising the 
campaigns against them, especially at the beginning. It is 
true, of course, that these attacks lack the interest that at- 
taches to direct contributions by Pope. On the other hand, 
Bentley and Theobald are far more important than men like 
Moore-Smythe or Concanen, who are remembered to-day 
only as the butts of Pope’s derision. Bentley is still famous 
as one of the greatest of English classical scholars and critics, 
and Theobald as the first and one of the most distinguished 
critics of the text of Shakespeare. 

Both Bentley and Theobald were old enemies of Pope’s. 
They had felt the lash of his satire and had been enrolled 
among the Dunces as types of dogmatic, pettifogging critics, 
who applied yardsticks to the works of great creative artists 
like Milton and Shakespeare, and who judged poetry vio- 
lently and without understanding or penetration. Against 
Theobald Pope had especial reason for disgust on account 


+ A letter on Theobald in 40 is ascribed to “A” in the Memoirs. Of course 
Theobald was included also in the list of would-be laureates of 1730, 
over whom Pope made merry. It should be noted that Mr. Lounsbury 
ascribed to Pope a number of items in these quarrels on what is appar- 
ently an assumption of internal evidence. It does not seem unreasonable 
to assume on the other hand that Pope thought it safer to keep some- 
what aloof from the Journal. 

[ 84] 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD 85 


of the controversy over the poet’s edition of Shakespeare. 
Theobald had attacked Pope’s work as a critic, had published 
Shakespeare Restored, and had so far presumed as to go on 
with a complete edition of his own which was to reveal the 
errors in Pope’s and supersede it. He had made himself 
obnoxious to one who never forgot or allowed wounded 
pride to heal. Pope hated Theobald as an enemy in the com- 
mon field of criticism, an enemy, moreover, whose success 
had been only too disconcerting. And for both Theobald and 
Bentley he felt the natural disdain of the poet for the “‘pe- 
destrian” and unsympathetic critic. 

In the 1730’s the great Richard Bentley was an old man, 
but he was by no means overcome by time. He was still active 
and productive, and thus potentially a good object for attack. 
Apparently he took no formal notice of the jibes at his 
criticism, but in spite of this the Grubstreet writers found 
great delight in dissecting his emendations of Milton, which, 
it must be confessed, were their legitimate prey. And if 
they did not have the satisfaction of embroiling Bentley him- 
self in controversy with them, they did draw answers from 
some of his adherents. Although the edition of Milton was 
not to appear for nearly two years, it was known to be in 
preparation, and some of Bentley’s emendations seem to have 
been public property. The attacks in the Journal began as 
early as the ninth number, in a letter signed ‘“Zoilus’? and 
dated Cambridge, March 1, 1730. The letter opens with 
words of approval for the new Journal, and then presents 
satirical emendations of Milton. For “secret” in the phrase 
“the secret top of Oreb”’ Zoilus would substitute “sacred’”’— 
actually one of Bentley’s own emendations. He objects to 
“adamantine chains” on the ground that chains could not be 
made of adamant, and offers instead the reading “in Adam 
and in chains,” which, he is assured, “frees us from all ob- 
scurity immediately.” Among other suggestions, he makes 
one in regard to the famous line— 

So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, 


*A nickname for Bentley. This letter was by Martyn (“B”), who 
seems to have maintained a close contact with affairs at Cambridge. 


86 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


where he is of the opinion that “serene” really should modify 
orbs—“‘orbs serene’’; and the passage, “‘And on his crest Sat 
Horror plumed,’ he emends to “Sat Horror plumb.” He 
then concludes as he had begun—‘“Pray my good friend, let 
me have your Journals every week, for I shall not trouble 
myself with any other newspaper.” This burlesque succeeded 
in drawing a bona fide answer and a serious defense of Bent- 
ley’s critical method. In number 12, ‘‘Philarchaeus” declares, 
“Tf the Doctor whom you are pleased to call Zoilus should 
publish his corrections of Milton you would see how far 
that author is from being clean [1.e. of corruptions].” Phil- 
archaeus declares that the Doctor has hundreds of emenda- 
tions of Milton. One of these reputed changes, “swelling 
gourd” for “smelling gourd” (Paradise Lost, VII, 321) 
he justifies at great length and with elaborate critical appa- 
ratus. This writer receives one of Bavius’ usual compli- 
ments, to the effect that he has ‘as well the true style as the 
penetration of a critic,” and is assured that if he were to go 
on with his work he would doubtless be of great aid to Zoilus 
and to Theobald. After a lapse of three months a second 
letter from Philarchaeus appeared in number 25, listing a 
number of errors “of ignorant or supine transcribers or 
publishers” noted in a critical study of Book I of Paradise 
Lost. 

These “errors”? make it plain that Philarchaeus was in 
Bentley’s confidence or was even acting as his agent,® for the 
second and third revisions were included in Bentley’s edition. 
They have, moreover, survived in later texts. The lines 
emended are as follows— 

I,451—Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood [Bentley: 
suffused ] 

673—That in his womb was hard metallic ore [hid] 


703—With wondrous art found out the massy ore [founded] 


*Philarchaeus gives the impression of being rather an affected and 
foolish admirer of Bentley. For instance he contributed to 49, as though 
it were of great significance, an anecdote about Bentley’s telling three 
lawyers he had had to advise him that they were like the three in Ter- 
ence (Phormio, II, 3) since after all their debate, he was less certain 
than ever—all this to illustrate the value of writing down striking pass- 
ages in one’s reading. 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD 87 


Philarchaeus states that he intends to submit similar dis- 
coveries in Book II, and insists, “We shall never see the 
moles and warts in learned authors removed unless we read 
more B—ana, and suspect that no page is free from the 
mistakes of ignorant transcribers, typographers, and editors, 
who are frequently corruptors, rather than correctors, of 
new editions.” Maevius in his comment follows a course 
somewhat unusual for him, of commending an adversary’s 
point. He gives sincere support to the last emendation, 
founded for found out, and even prints another change 
said to come “‘from the mouth of a very great man.’ Never- 
theless, he advises all little men to forbear such audacious 
hypercriticism. The use of such criticism, he maintains, is 
well demonstrated by Philarchaeus, “but to alter whole 
words, solely by conjecture, without the least foundation in 
the text, we cannot think allowable.”’ He then becomes 
ironical and facetious over suggested readings for VI, 
512 ff.* In these early attacks on textual criticism the most 
significant fact is perhaps the discussion of Bentley’s emenda- 
tions before their publication. 

These specific discussions now came to an end, but were 
followed by a number of satirical allusions to Bentley and 
his criticism. A humorist from Trinity College, writing on 
“Sunday afternoon in chapel time,” offers (number 35) an 
emendation “of that no less jugulating than titillating satir- 
ist, Butler.” Another correspondent, aiming especially at 

* The passage as a whole reads :— 

[they] saw beneath 510 

The originals of Nature in their crude 

Conception; sulphurous and nitrous foam 

They found, they mingled, and, with subtle art 

Concocted and adusted; they reduced 

To blackest grain, and into store conveyed. 515 
He is especially ironical over the change of 514 to 

Concocted; then with charcoal they reduced. 
He also mentions one of the clavissimi who suggests the reading of the 
preceding lines—“Conception; sulphur, charc and nitrous foam / They 
found—.” Bentley emends this passage and does insert “chark,’’ but line 
513 he reads, “They pound, they mingle, and with subtle art.” These 


contributors evidently knew of some of Bentley’s emendations, although 
not accurately. 


88 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Theobald, alludes (number 37) sarcastically to translators 
of classic poets into English prose. ‘Poor Milton himself,” 
he says, “has not escaped their hands.”’ A poor doggerel 
poem in the same number makes Bentley one of the aspirants 
for the nettle, the critic's crown, and refers to his never 
being in chapel. 

For nearly a year hereafter Bentley suffered no annoyance, 
but the approaching publication of the Milton gave point to 
a renewal of the attack. One “S” in number 82, obviously 
with Bentley in mind, attacks the whole tribe of critics, who, 
he says, look chiefly for mistakes and errors and are fond 
of voluminous notes. By way of burlesque he concocts criti- 
cal material on the first lines of Paradise Lost, giving vari- 
ous readings, and emending and collating manuscripts. He 
even discusses that crux, “the sacred top of Oreb.” A letter 
from “P. Dulman” appeared the next week in answer to a 
query by “S” concerning lines in Paradise Lost, IX— 


—or to Ceres in her prime 
Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove. 


Dulman offers “Yet virgin, or Proserpina from Jove” and 
declares, “I think this reading yields a clear sense, is in Mil- 
ton’s manner, and I doubt not but it came so from his 
mouth.” 

Then in number 87, Bentley’s friend Philarchaeus writes 
again that having had a sight of the first sheets of the new 
Milton, which Bentley had “communicated to several of his 
friends,” he had been particularly pleased with the revision 
of Paradise Lost, I, 157— 

Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable 


to be here 
or here to dwell 


He suggests, “If you can’t refuse it I hope you'll commend 
and applaud it. But I see you are no great friend to emenda- 
tion criticism.”’ This letter is answered in number 89 by 
“Philonous,” who admits that while he does not know 
whether the emendation suggested is really Bentley’s, he 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD 89 


thinks it is, “for ’tis perfectly agreeable to his taste and 
spirit.”” He then makes it clear that the argument in support 
of such a change was futile nonsense. 
This encounter was followed in number 98 by a burlesque 
from Zoilus—an emendation of Chevy Chace— 
They kissed them dead a thousand times 


When they were clad in clay. 
cold as clay 


—on the ground that the original is not sensible, and that 
the northern pronunciation of cold is cald, and that the word 
might have been so spelled, thus deceiving a southern printer. 
Moreover, he declares, the new reading fits better into the 
whole context and gives “a fine idea of the warm affections 
of the wives, who so lovingly embraced and kissed their 
husbands, ‘when they were cold as clay’.” There were also 
several epigrams,? among them one in Latin, ‘“Homerus 
Bentleii ab igne servatus,’ and another article (number 
106) from Philarchaeus, combining fulsome praise of the 
Grub-street Journal with testimony to Bentley’s success as an 
elucidator of Horace. 

As soon as Bentley’s new edition was actually in the hands 
of readers, there began a continuous, sustained attack, de- 
tailed and reasoned discussions being interlarded with satiri- 
cal epigrams, burlesques, and personal allusions. The preface 
revealed itself to be especially vulnerable. The first shot in 
the controversy, a letter by “J. T.’’® in number 108, under- 
takes quite successfully to demonstrate the absurdity of such 
statements in the preface as that Milton used an amanuensis 
not only because he was blind but because he was “obnoxious 
to the government, poor, and friendless”’ ; and that there was 
a “secret history” of the writing of Paradise Lost which 
accounted for the supposed errors. Another correspondent, 


* See 99, 100, 101. These are all reprinted (unascribed) in the Memoirs, 
and the second, beginning “Did Milton’s prose, O Charles, thy death 
defend?” is included among the nine epigrams ascribed to Pope by 
modern editors. 

* Probably Russel, who sometimes, according to the Memoirs, used these 
initials as a signature. This letter, however, is not reprinted in the 
Memotrs. 


90 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


“A. Z.,” in number 113, which was devoted almost entirely 
to the Milton, continues the attack on the preface. To prove 
the interfering hand of an editor, Bentley had relied on four 
passages which are changed from satisfactory readings in 
the first edition to what he considered unsatisfactory ones 
in the second. A. Z. contends, however, that these changes 
are desirable; he maintains that they conform to their Bibli- 
cal originals and to the general sense of their context. In one 
case Bentley cites, as evidence of corruption of the text, a 
necessary scansion of Michael in three syllables, claiming 
that Milton used it as a dissyllable, an argument which A. 
Z. refutes quite adequately by listing a number of lines where 
Michael, as well as Uriel, Raphael, and other similar names, 
are trisyllabic.? That the Journal's sarcastic temper was oc- 
casionally impartial is indicated by an editorial comment. 
A. Z. prefaces his refutation of Bentley with the statement 
that he has read no remarks on the Milton but those in the 
Journal, and that as he is engaged in making some himself 
he “avoids being led into other men’s notions’”—a statement 
which draws from the editor the dry remark that after he 
has written his ideas down he would do well to compare 
them with other people’s. This number also contains a second 
communication from J. T.,* declaring that his arguments in 
number 108, though they have been answered, have not been 
refuted. In this letter he refers to Milton Restored,® which he 
had evidently seen since his letter in number 108, as the 


"The Journal subjoins a note to A. Z.’s letter saying that various other 
correspondents have pointed out the fact that Michael is often used as 
three syllables. In ‘“‘Pegasus in Grubstreet” the editor mentions various 
other letters received regarding the Milton controversy and speaks of 
having “completed what we thought sufficient to overthrow the greatest 
part of the Doctor’s preface; the foundation upon which all his conjec- 
tural emendations are built. As we design to go through the whole poem 
in a methodical manner, we desire our ingenious and learned correspond- 
ents to make their observations on the twelve books in their proper order, 
and not to proceed in a desultory manner, forward and backward, from 
one to another.” 

* Russel again? 

° Milton Restored and Bentley Deposed (1732). In this letter, J. T. 
mistakenly takes Bentley to task for dating the first edition of Paradise 
Lost 1667 instead of 1669. The earlier date is of course correct, as A. Z. 
noted in 116. 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD oF 


source of some of his present argument. According to him 
the contention that Milton was “poor, friendless, and ob- 
noxious to the government” he had so answered as to con- 
tradict it and destroy its usefulness. Moreover, the statement 
that Paradise Lost was sold to a poor printer was false; it 
was sold to Simons, who was well-to-do. Bentley’s statement 
that Milton never read what he had dictated was likewise 
false; for how could he have made the changes which Bent- 
ley asserts that he made in the second edition if the poem 
had not been read over to him? In the same way, consider- 
ing Bentley’s argument that the later poems were correct 
because the poet was in good standing and had a good 
printer, J. T. asks why Milton did not employ a good printer 
and supervisor for the second edition of Paradise Lost, 
which appeared in 1674, after Paradise Regained in 
1671? Still another damaging assault on Bentley’s preface 
was made in number 116 by A. Z. Bentley had remarked, 
“. . this poem has for sixty years time passed upon the 
whole nation for a perfect, absolute, faultless composition.” 
A. Z., however, recalls Addison’s criticisms of Milton in the 
Spectator, and adds that Bentley quotes them several times. 
He also points out that Bentley will base an argument on 
the fact that Milton aimed rather at “strong expression than 
flowing numbers,” whereas in another place it suits him 
better to argue on the basis of Milton’s genius for music. 
He then concludes with caustic remarks on the pretension 
of a man who will undertake to rebuild a whole poem. This, 
he says, will not increase Milton’s fame, and if Bentley’s end 
is to increase his own as a poet (Bentley had declared that 
under his hand the poem would be “wrought up to its highest 
perfection”) he might better write original poetry. 

For a time hereafter the controversy lapsed almost entirely 
into satire and personality, but it came back at last in number 
131 to serious consideration of Bentley’s work. In a lengthy 
essay it is clearly shown that many typical emendations in 
Book I had no foundation except in Bentley’s own peculiar 
taste, and were not needed to improve or clarify the sense. In 


o2 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


some cases, as “‘the secret top of Oreb,” which had been fre- 
quently discussed, the writer shows that the original word is 
justified by the circumstances of its use or by implication 
from biblical passages. Most of the first page of number 137 
is also devoted to an analysis of emendations, which are 
occasionally treated humorously. For instance, of Bentley’s 
emendation of “night-foundered” to ‘“nigh-foundered” (I, 
204), “Mr. Conundrum” remarks, “The critic in this place 
was certainly nigh-foundered, if not night-foundered.’”’ The 
weakness of Bentley’s reliance on such arbitrary reasons for 
emending as that a certain passage “does not reach up to our 
author’s usual exactness”’ is also illustrated. Bavius’ expressed 
intention of going through all twelve books, was, however, 
never carried out, probably a fortunate circumstance for the 
Journal. A further discussion of instances by Bavius himself 
in number 146 proved to be the last installment of this sort 
which the Journal published. 

This matter, for the most part direct and serious in its 
point of view, was enlivened and relieved throughout its 
whole course by a good deal of satirical humor, ranging from 
pure personality to the more effective method of parody and 
burlesque. Personal animosity crept into the controversy 
almost at once. In number 110, Bentley and his supporter 
Philarchaeus were both savagely mauled, for the sake of 
Horace, by a correspondent signing himself Horatianus. 
Bentley is declared to be a murderer of Horace as well as a 
violator of Milton, and Philarchaeus is scornfully convicted 
of callowness and affectation, by his allusions to his friends’ 
country-houses, his condescending praise of the Grub-street 
Journal, his silly pretense of delight in Horace (in number 
106), and his fondness for French phrases and classic cita- 
tions. As for his emendations of Horace, it is said, he would 
realize, if he knew any Latin, that the lines needed no emen- 
dation. Bavius apparently saw the possibility of an interest- 
ing diversion here, for he appended footnotes which seem, at 
least, impartial, and encouraged both correspondents to con- 
tinue their quarrel—‘‘their arguments shall be presented to 
the public in this paper with the greatest impartiality.” 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD ay 


Various correspondents brought up the question of Bent- 
ley’s fitness in the matter of poetic temperament to undertake 
such a labor as the present one. In connection with “A. Z.’s” 
strictures in number 116 on Bentley’s assumption of his own 
poetic taste and his ability to raise Paradise Lost “to its high- 
est perfection” appeared an epigram in the same vein. Bentley 
had somewhat smugly applied to himself in his preface Ver- 
gil’s lines referring to himself as a poet in his friends’ 
esteem 


—Sunt mihi carmina; me quoque dicunt 
Vatem pastores; sed non ego credulus illis. 


Upon which one of the “Grubs” remarks quite aptly— 


How could vile sycophants contrive 
A lie so gross to raise; 

Which even B—y can’t believe 
Tho spoke in his own praise. 


Bavius (Russel) followed the same line of attack in number 
118. He compares statements from Fenton’s edition of 1730 
with Bentley’s, remarking that Fenton is “at least as famous 
for his poetical genius as Dr. Bentley.” He notices Bentley’s 
declaration that forty years before he would have suppressed 
these notes, fearing for his rising fortune, and is of the 
opinion that it would have been wiser even for a person of 
Bentley’s mature age to have done so, especially in view of 
the confessedly hasty nature of the work, which Bentley had 
sent to press as soon as it was written. Finally, he declares 
that Bentley is “a very learned critic, but never imagined to 
be a poet,” that he has “acted more like a pedagogue than a 
critic,” and has treated “the heroic poem of the great Milton 
like the exercise of a schoolboy.” To this article is appended 
a letter from Zoilus, which, as Bavius points out, reveals by 
burlesque the ease as well as the futility of applying Bentley’s 
method to any poem. Zoilus takes Book IV, lines 677 ff. and 
writes a note on them more Bentletano— 

‘Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth’—Indeed! Millions! 


so many could not walk together in Paradise, which the author must 
mean by earth, unless ‘gods met gods, and jostled in the dark.’ 


04 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Besides, so many singers would quite deafen Adam and Eve, or 
else deprive them of all sleep and distract them. Read it, therefore, 
as the author gave it, Several. 


Again, Bavius made light of Bentley’s poetic endowments in 
an epigram in number 122, “A word to Mr. Conundrum; 
Quaere, whether Dr. Bentley’s Paradise Lost would not be 
Milton’s Paradise Regained.” 

The more purely personal side of the attack was stressed 
again in two letters by “A. Z.” in number 125, dated April 
13, and April 28, on Bentley’s vainglorious statement that 
he had written the notes on Milton ex tempore. This boast- 
ing, it was said, was of course merely for Bentley’s own 
glory and the catching of compliments, although it made 
little difference, as Bentley was so cocksure that he would 
never revise a first impression anyway. It might, however, 
be asserted on the authority of Dr. Ashenhurst that Bentley 
had told as much as eight or nine years before of making 
notes on Milton. A. Z. also turns spitefully upon Bentley 
and asks without much pertinence why the critic, who had 
been favored so highly by Church and State, should extol 
the morality of Milton, who was so bitter an enemy to them. 
A. Z.’s second letter, dated April 28, is a much less effective 
piece of criticism. Here he maintains that Bentley has evoked 
the idea of an editor merely to save himself from censure; 
he wished to attack the poem and thought it less dangerous 
to lay its faults on an editor who was a mere phantom than 
on Milton himself. He thinks that all the violent language 
Bentley applies to the editor should recoil upon himself, and 
recalls that Bentley did much the same thing in a paper war 
of 1721, when he attacked Dr. Colbatch for a book known to 
be written by Dr. Middleton, and expressed himself in bil- 
lingsgate so violent that it was censured by the University 
authorities. A personal animus against Bentley and a desire 
to blow old quarrels into flame is also made evident in a 
clumsy epigram published in this same issue in allusion to 
the ancient controversy between Bentley and Boyle. 

Toward the end the controversy tapered off with a few 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD 95 


scattered epigrams, verses, and short parodies or burlesques. 
The reason for an emendation of bold to old in I, 127, was 
explained (number 137) by a similar emendation of “the 
learned Johnstonus” in The Ode of Tom Bostock, and the 
same writer suggests an emendation of Chevy Chace, increas- 
ing “exactness of phrase,” and revising the rime to fit— 

A bow he had bent in his hand 

Made of a trusty tree [yew] 


An arrow of a cloth yard long 
Full to the head drew he [he drew] 


In number 153 an instance is cited of three lines in a manu- 
script turning out to be merely instructions of a transcriber 
to a printer, and not, as had been supposed, a part of the 
text. Upon this there is the comment, ‘“The impertinence and 
ignorance of amanuenses, hackney writers and printers, etc., 
are intolerable. The learned Dr. Bentley has justly exposed 
them in his famous edition of Milton.” 

This was the last shot in the quarrel, but one gets now and 
again in later issues an echo of it. In number 229, in an 
attack on Theobald’s Shakespeare, Bavius refers to ‘“Bent- 
ley’s (the greatest literal critic now alive) pretended matters 
of fact [and his] extraordinary liberties” with Milton. A 
writer calling himself ‘“Torrentius” in a discussion of emen- 
dations suggested for a difficult bit of Horace (number 266) 
refers to “the ornate manner of the operose Bentley,” and 
“B. T.” in number 329 praises Bentley’s emendations of the 
classics and takes his part against Bishop Hoadley, who called 
the critic a blockhead. He might be “proud, conceited, and 
tyrannical,” but certainly he was not a blockhead. 

The attacks on Bentley are much more successful than 
those on Theobald, for obvious reasons. Bentley brought 
forth a widely heralded edition of Milton devised on abso- 
lutely false principles and crying to be exposed. It was exactly 
the sort of production for which the Grub-street Journal 
sought, and the editors fell upon it with delight as a perfect 
object for criticism by methods varying from direct frontal 
attack, as in the examination of the preface and specific 


96 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


emendations, to burlesque and parody. And to these the edi- 
tors added, as was their fashion, the weapon of personal 
attack, although the ease with which other methods could be 
applied made resort to this one less necessary and less fre- 
quent than usual. Where abuse of the book itself was so easy, 
and moreover so legitimate, why turn to the author himself ? 
It should be noted, however, that the Journal and its corre- 
spondents were by no means alone in recognizing the weak- 
nesses of Bentley’s edition. A modern bibliography’® of Bent- 
ley lists seven contemporary pamphlets exposing its errors or 
satirizing it. One of these, entitled A Review of the Text of 
Milton’s Paradise Lost. In which the chief of Dr. Bentley's 
emendations are considered, runs to two hundred and eighty- 
seven pages of systematic analysis and is, as a matter of fact, 
quoted freely by Bavius in his remarks on the Milton. When 
one remembers the arbitrary principles on which Bentley 
worked, and grasps the implications inherent in such a remark 
of his as that reason and good sense were worth to an editor 
more than a hundred manuscripts, it is not surprising that 
his hostile brethren found his Milton such a happy hunting 
ground. 

In Theobald’s case, on the contrary, the work the Journal 
would have liked to demolish was too sound and staunch. 
Theobald’s Shakespeare was quite a different story from 
Bentley’s Milton. Hence, the attack upon Theobald, which 
was essential for Pope’s sake and because of Theobald’s old 
alignment with the Dunces, was forced into more personal 
channels, and was thus much less pointed and damaging than 
had been the one on Bentley. 

The Journal's first allusion to Theobald’s Shakespeare 
came in Philarchaeus’ first letter in number 12, where, in 
dealing with Bentley and Milton, the writer turns to a gen- 
eral consideration of literal criticism. He says that appar- 
ently Shakespeare is in a worse condition and fuller of false 
readings than any of the ancients, judging from the work of 


* A. T. Bartholomew and J. W. Clark, A Bibliography of Richard 
Bentley, D.D., 1908. Note also J. W. Mackail’s Warton Lecture, Bentley’s 
Milton (1924), in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. X1. 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD 97 


Pope and Theobald. “If there was half as much nonsense 
and absurdity in Aristophanes or Sophocles as is yet to be 
found after all Pope’s and Theobald’s labors in almost every 
page of Shakespeare, I am sure they would be far from 
deserving the admiration and praises they have had for so 
many ages.”’ Moreover, not only Shakespeare, Milton, and 
Waller, but “all our best poets are full of false lections.”’ 
_ Bavius proposes that since things are so desperate, this writer 
go on with his criticism and help Zoilus (Bentley) with Mil- 
ton, Theobald with Shakespeare, and Maevius with Waller, 
and let it be seen how these editions would surpass “‘those of 
our inveterate enemies, Mr. Pope and Mr. Fenton, who have 
injuriously encroached upon a province which has by a pre- 
scription time out of mind, peculiarly belonged to the gentle- 
men of our society.” 

In number 37 appears a letter signed ““B. T.”’ which Bavius 
prints in spite of a declared lack of agreement with its author. 
“B. T.”, who later joined the forces against Bentley, attacks 
prose translations of the classics and says he hears that Theo- 
bald has in hand a translation of Aeschylus, in spite of the 
failure of his Aristophanes, “and although he has peoples’ 
money in his pocket for his emendations of Shakespeare.— 
But I ought to add, indeed,” he continues, and at this point 
one imagines Bavius parting company with him, “that I hear 
he intends to give us the text of Shakespeare as well as notes, 
as soon as he can bring matters to bear; a work his very 
enemies will, I believe, allow him to be capable of.” The same 
charge of accepting subscriptions and making no returns is 
repeated in number 40 in a burlesque illiterate letter prob- 
ably by Pope himself.’? During the contest for the laureate- 
ship which took place in the autumn of 1730 following Eus- 
den’s death, frequent sarcastic allusions were made to Theo- 
bald’s poetic aspirations, and his name was coupled with 
those of the other poetasters who were considered ambitious 
of the laurel—such men as Welsted, Cook, Stephen Duck, 
and James Moore-Smythe. This whole group was frequently 


* Ascribed to “A.” 


98 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


subjected to the contemptuous satire of Bavius, as well as to 
cutting epigrams probably by Pope. 

Upon the publication of his Shakespeare, Theobald of 
course brought upon himself more individual attention, 
although doubtless not so much as the Journal would have 
liked to pay him, considering the importance of his work and 
his direct rivalry with Pope. The comparatively small amount 
which the Journal published and its obvious difficulty in find- 
ing specific points that were really vulnerable bear sufficient 
witness to the difference in quality between this work and 
Bentley’s. The first attack came from “A. H.’—possibly 
Aaron Hill??—in number 143, a sarcastic criticism of two 
emendations, Venus and Adonis, Stanza 142: 


Soothing the humor of fantastic wits [Theobald: wights] 


and Titus Andronicus, Act II, final scene: 


And might not gain so great an happiness 
As half thy love. [Theobald: have thy love].13 


A. H. takes occasion to refer to “the learned and never 
enough admired Mr. L. T.,” and ends, 


Upon mentioning these two emendations to Mr. Conundrum he said 
he feared Mr. T. was but a half-witted critic, and immediately re- 
peated two lines from Harlequin Horace. At more leisure I perhaps 
may examine this emendator a little farther; at present (to use his 
own words) upon a careful perusal of his criticisms, I dare warrant 
that any person of moderate sagacity may furnish out a large crop 
of errors.14 


Whatever the truth of the last statement, the “large crop of 
errors” was never furnished out for the Grub-street Journal. 
As a matter of fact, this represented the only effort of 
the Journal to pick flaws in Theobald’s emendations of 
Shakespeare. 


* Later, during the quarrel with the Prompter, Hill is spoken of as a 
former contributor. 
* The second of these emendations seems to have been accepted by 
modern editors; the first has not. 
* For the two lines alluded to, see Harlequin Horace, p. 12: 
Theobald in mail complete of dullness clad 
Half bard, half puppet man, half-fool, half-mad. 


BEN TLE VO AND TAIBOBAED oe 


Finding the emendations too difficult to deal with, Theo- 
bald’s critics sought a more vulnerable point of approach in 
his introductory essay defending the general principles of 
verbal criticism. Here he had quite needlessly cited eight 
classic passages where the method might usefully be applied.*® 
An anonymous writer in number 220, after slighting remarks 
on emendation in general and the presumption of critics who 
referred to their work as “Bentley’s Horace,” or ‘“Theo- 
bald’s Shakespeare,” proceeded to criticise one of Theobald’s 
typical emendations in his preface, the change of o®ua to 
duua in a passage from Platonius.‘* The writer attacks 
this emendation, introduces pictures of Greek masks (the 
subject of the passage), and suggests instead, oda a read- 
ing which he maintains makes the passage clear. He con- 
cludes, “Let not Mr. Theobald say (as critics of his rank 
are very jealous) that this is making a face at him [a 
pun on the subject of masks] for we protest it is no 
way intended for a picture of Mr. Theobald, but only of 


** Theobald himself admitted that he inserted them to support his repu- 
tation as a scholar. See Jones, Lewis Theobald, 169. 

* Theobald’s preface (p. lv) reads as follows: “The author is saying, 
that, in the old Comedy, the Masks were made so nearly to resemble the 
Persons to be satirized, that before the Actor spoke a Word, it was 
known whom he was to personate. But, in the New Comedy, when 
Athens was conquered by the Macedonians, and the Poets were fearful 
lest their Masks should be construed to resemble any of their New 
Governors, they formed them so preposterously as only to move Laugh- 
ter ; 6p@pev youv (says He) ta’s ofpis év Tois copruw7os ToD Mevavdpouv 
Kwpwoias drrotas Exel, Kal Orrws eeorpappevov 76 [Q°MA kal ovde Kar avOpo- 
awv pow. “We see therefore what strange Eyebrows there are to the 
Masks used in Menander’s Comedies; and how the Body is distorted, and 
unlike any human Creature alive.” But the Author, ’tis evident, is speak- 
ing abstractedly of Masks; and what Reference has the Distortion of 
the Body to the Look of a Visor? I am satisfied, Platonius wrote; Kai 
Grws eeotpappevov T6,OMMA: i.e. “and how the Eyes were goggled and 
distorted.” This is to the Purpose of his Subject: and Jul. Pollux, in de- 
scribing the Comic Masques, speaks of some that had STPEBAON 706 
“OMMA : Others, that were AIA‘STPO®OI riv"OWIN. Perversis oculis, 
as Cicero calls them, speaking of Roscius.’”” The word oopa, suggested 
by the writer in 220, does not appear in the standard dictionaries of 
either classical or Byzantine Greek. It might be thought that he had 
oropa. in mind, but he makes it clear that he means copa. 


100 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


his criticisms.’’ Another correspondent, ‘‘N. A.”’, contributed 
to number 229 a much fairer letter—‘‘The late edition of 
Shakespeare is such an one as, I think, will give the highest 
pleasure to all lovers of that poet; and at the same time must 
forever silence all the little wits who abuse literal criticism.”’ 
He is of the opinion that Theobald has shown the necessity 
for this sort of work, although he might have spared the 
Greek instances in the preface, which are occasionally inac- 
curate. In support of this statement he points out weaknesses 
in Theobald’s argument for one of his emendations in the 
carved inscription on a Greek votive tablet.‘ “Upon the 
whole I think Mr. T. had not the least occasion to call in 
assistance from Greece in order to maintain the title he so 
incontestably possesses of the best English critic.” The 
Journal printed this letter in spite of its favorable attitude 
toward Theobald, but Bavius added a comment which as far 
as possible minimized any satisfaction Theobald might draw 
from it. He asserted that Bentley was doubtless the greatest 
literal critic living, and that his method with Paradise Lost 
had been shown to be absolutely false. Theobald had notwith- 
standing attempted to excuse him by giving a wrong account 
of his aim and purpose, and had then followed his example. 
Bavius then lit upon Theobald’s eight “flagrant instances”’ 
from the Greek and declared that all but three of them could 
be exploded, and that even those might upon close examina- 
tion suffer the same fate. He also called Theobald to book 
for treating manuscript and carved inscriptions in the same 
way, and for failing to consult the antiquarians, Spon and 
Chishull, who were authorities on such matters. This com- 
ment by Bavius is perhaps most noteworthy for its serious- 
ness; from beginning to end there is no hint of satire. 
Moreover, it drew an answer signed “Lewis Theobald,” an 
unusual instance in a paper which conducted literary and 
other quarrels anonymously or under pseudonyms, and whose 
adversaries rarely answered directly and openly, preferring 

“ Theobald alluded to the controversy over the Greek inscription in 


two letters to Warburton dated July 11 and August 27, 1734. See Jones, 
Lewis Theobald, pp. 330, 333. 


BENTLEY AND PAEOBALD 101 


rather to make use of some rival publication, and in any case 
to withhold their own names. Theobald admitted errors in 
regard to the votive tablet, but explained fully and satisfac- 
torily how he came to fall into them.'® He then gave “N. A.” 
some information of which the latter was ignorant, likewise 
telling Bavius of his intention and desire to submit another 
letter on the emendation dua. Theobald’s tone in this 
letter is distinctly unpleasant. He had clearly the better of the 
argument, but while he grudgingly admitted N. A.’s courtesy, 
he was at the same time offensive, seeming to be most inter- 
ested in proving lapses on the part of his opponents. Toward 
Bavius this attitude was perhaps justified, but N. A. had 
treated him with the utmost consideration. In fact, Theobald’s 
rudeness was resented by N. A., who complained of it in 
“Pegasus in Grub-street” in number 234. Bavius, however, 
who had long been an ardent and aggressive wrangler, was 
doubtless untouched by Theobald’s retorts. He merely turns 
to a side issue, declaring— 

I could not but wonder, that after so long a publication of our 
Journal this new and learned correspondent should mistake in the 
address of the preceding letter, directing it to the author of the 
Grub-street Journal, as if this paper were written by any one parti- 
cular author. And I am apt to suspect that Mr. T. designed it as a 
slight toward me by way of revenge, for my supposed spleen to him, 


of which he unjustly complains. It is true that this paper has been 
the vehicle for several tho not all reflections levelled at him.1® 


Bavius’ further remarks are somewhat conciliatory. He dis- 
avows spleen toward Theobald and promises to print any 
letters as ingenuous as this last. He cannot, however, resist 
the temptation to point out lapses in Theobald’s Latin, as 
well as what he deems a wrong account of the word Bosporus. 
In number 234 Theobald’s promised defense of 6Oyya was 
forthcoming with an overwhelming flood of citations to 
show that the passage in question involved the idiomatic use 
of the singular eye for eyes, a use common in Greek, Latin, 
and English. He also refers with utmost scorn to his op- 


* See Jones, Lewis Theobald, p. 199. 
* Theobald’s phrases. 


102 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ponent’s sneers at his work as “a masterpiece of trifling and 
vanity.” Theobald’s argument here was too strong for 
Bavius to refute, although he made the attempt. 

Thus the only criticism which the Journal was able to 
advance against Theobald’s Shakespeare lay in an assault 
upon two single emendations, and upon the classical passages 
used as illustrations in his preface. And in his defence of 
the latter, Theobald forced Bavius to meet him with direct 
and serious criticism, and then won a conclusive victory. In 
fair fight upon the current issue the Journal had little success. 

The only point indeed where the Journal had any success 
at all was in a sly, humorous note attached to an advertise- 
ment in number 218 of Verbal Criticism, An Epistle to Mr. 
Pope occasioned by Theobald’s Shakespeare and Bentley's 
Milton. In this advertisement Lawton Gilliver, the publisher 
of the poem, and likewise of the Journal itself (according 
to Lounsbury, he was forced by Pope to pay Mallet twenty 
guineas for the poem) after taking great praise to himself 
for mentioning “what is said in dispraise’ of a piece he 
was publishing, is made to “own ingenuously to the town” 
that Theobald had declared in the preface to his Shakespeare 
that “he could see for his part no manner of conceit, wit, or 
joke in the poem here advertised.’’ This was followed the 
next week (number 219) by a letter to Mr. Bavius signed by 
Gilliver : 


Though it may seem presumption in me who am only a seller of 
books, to invade the high province of one who says he is a restorer 
of them, yet when Mr. Theobald finds that I do it more out of 
friendship to him than to myself perhaps he will treat me more 
mercifully than he does the author of a late epistle on Verbal Criti- 
cism by me printed. That Epistle indeed has put him grievously out 
of temper, insomuch that he affirms positively the author is a 
baboon, a pedlar, and that his wit is as thick as Tewkesbury mustard. 


This is then elaborated with a dissertation on Tewkesbury 
Mustard with learned allusion to support an emendation to 
custard. It was only in this lighter vein that the Journal’s 
attacks on Theobald had much success.”° 


* Jones in Lewis Theobald, p. 194, n. 3, inadvertently speaks of this 
letter as signed by Mallet instead of Gilliver. Lounsbury (First Editors 


BENTLEY AND THEOBALD 103 


It was not for Russel and his associates to overcome 
Theobald as a critic. They were able, however, to find two 
weak spots in his armor. During the contest for the laureate- 
ship in 1730, Theobald’s aspiration to the laurel had sub- 
jected him to the sarcasms of Bavius and even Pope him- 
self in a series of notes and epigrams which cut much deeper 
and keener than anything that could be said of his Shakes- 
peare.”1 The Journal also made some capital of Theobald’s 
unfortunate declaration that he had discovered a lost play 
by Shakespeare, The Double Falsehood. In number 97, the 
Journal, which somewhat earlier had been persecuting 
James Moore-Smythe, whom it had “convicted of death,” 
drew up a bill concerning the writings of all those similarly 
“convicted.”’ In this bill was inserted the clause “Provided 
nothing shall be construed to prejudice L. T— Esq... . 
in any right or title which he may have, or pretend to have, 
of affixing the name of William Shakespeare . . . to any 
book, pamphlet, play, or poem hereafter to be by him... 
devised.” In the next issue the same charge is imputed again 
in a passage from Modern Poets— 

See T— leaves the lawyer’s gainful train 

To wrack with poetry his tortured brain. 

Fired, or not fired, to write resolves with rage 

And constant pores o’er Shakespeare’s sacred page. 
Then starting cries—I something will be thought 

T'll write—then—boldly swears twas Shakespeare wrote. 


Strange! he in poetry no forgery fears 
That knows so well in law he’d lose his ears.?? 


These campaigns against Bentley and Theobald represent 
the Grub-street Journal's two chief excursions into the field 
of textual criticism. In both are to be discovered its typical 
personal prejudices in favor of Pope and against his enemies. 


of Shakespeare, p. 448), says it was “manifestly written by Pope, with 
the possible cS ES of Mallet, though the wit displayed in it did not 
require a conjunction of the abilities of the two.” 

™ See ante, Chapter ii. 

”¥For the authorship of The Double Falsehood, see Lounsbury, pp. 
145 ff. and Jones, Lewis Theobald, pp. 101 ff. The authorship i is doubtful ; 
it is almost certainly not by Theobald himself, but has been ascribed to 
Shirley and Massinger. 


104 LHE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


They doubtless underlie and motivate all the argument and 
discussion. In the criticism of Theobald’s Shakespeare, there 
is unfortunately little to be found but a futile animosity.?* 
In Bentley’s Milton on the other hand the editors lit upon a 
work not unworthy of their treatment, and in spite of 
motives which were probably not too noble, they may fairly 
be said to have performed a desirable work of the sort for 
which the paper was ostensibly and legitimately intended. 

** In 227 appears the prose description of the literary garretteer which 
was to suggest Hogarth’s famous plate, The Distressed Poet, two years 
later. It has been conjectured that Hogarth’s picture, and hence this 
passage in the Journal also, were attacks on Theobald, but Mr. R. H. 
Griffith, who has discussed the point at length thinks it doubtful, since 
at this time Theobald was known much less as poet than critic, and was 


by no means poverty-stricken. (See The Manly Anniversary Studies in 
Language and Literature, Chicago, 1923, p. 190.) 


CHAP THR LY 
QUARRELS WITH OTHER PERIODICALS 


The Grub-street Journal was an Ishmael among its 
brethren, the other periodicals. Its comments on them were 
continuous, and never friendly or conciliatory. In fact, it 
elected most of their editors or authors members of the 
Grubstreet Society, thus identifying and linking them with 
Pope’s Dunces. For instance (in number 74) several mem- 
bers are accused of absenting themselves from meeting, and 
even abusing “our Society,’ among others OJ[sbor]ne, 
W [alsingha]m, the Orator and the [Weekly] Register. Of 
the last the writer declares, ‘“But we could not but be sur- 
prised at the desertion of our Register no longer ago than 
last Saturday; who he [sic] had made so many repeated 
declarations that he would never engage in the petulance of 
party.” In number 46 it replied in doggerel verse to an 
attack in Fog’s Journal, and then, having waited in vain for 
_Fog’s to answer, published three weeks later verses which 
it suggested might have been used by its opponent. Hardly 
a number lacks a more or less damaging allusion to a rival 
among the dailies and weeklies, and with several of them 
the Journal carried on pitched battles of major importance. 
Nothing gave it greater pleasure than to predict the ap- 
proaching death of another newspaper, or to record that 
event when it actually occurred. For instance, as early as 
number 8 one may read, “Last Wednesday night died at his 
lodgings in the Old Bailey, the Morning Post, a painful 
member of our society. He was a young gentleman naturally 
of a weak and crazy constitution.”” His history is sketched 
and his various names reported. The cause of his death is 
said to have been a combination of atrophy and consump- 
tion, and toward the end, it is declared, he grew delirious 
and spoke in Welsh,—this in allusion, if one is to judge 
from a quotation, to a case of bad “‘pieing’” by a compositor. 


[ 105 ] 


106 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


In the next number, 9, is noticed in a similar style the death 
of the Post Man, who had been given up to “riddles and 
cramp questions” and whose ‘“‘sedentary life soon hurried 
him to his grave.” What seems to be the implied decease 
of the Weekly Medley is reported in number 27, where that 
paper is advertised as “strayed”; “. . . he speaks broken 
English interlarded with French and Latin, and frequently 
tags the ends of his sentences with rime.”? A circumstantial 
account is also given (number 382) of the death of the Daily 
Journal: He had grown old and could no longer find his way 
to coffee houses. Hence he made an arrangement with the 
Prompter, who was very lame, that they should make use 
of each other’s eyes and legs. But finally the Prompter died 
of a bad fall, and his place was taken by a cousin, the Oc- 
castonal Prompter, who was too heavy to carry well, and 
also suffered a fatal fall which was the end of both. In one 
issue, number 288, were joyfully recorded the deaths of four 
colleagues ; following obituary verses by Maevius on the Bee, 
came the note :—‘‘The last week proved fatal to the offspring 
of some of our most eminent members, the Free Briton dy- 
ing on Monday and the London Journal and Daily Courant 
on Saturday.” On occasion the Journal sardonically took up 
the duties of these defunct brethren; witness the announce- 
ment in number 39 that the Weekly Medley, which had been 
publishing a weekly list of new books, “having vanished 
away instantaneously,” the Journal would undertake the task, 
“being convinced of the usefulness of that design.” 

The most fertile ground for attack on the papers lay in 
their inaccurate and misleading, not to say false, reporting 
of news. As a writer calling himself ‘‘Histrio-Apris’’ re- 
marks in number 317, “It is a distinguishing mark of news 

*A foot note in the Memoirs states that the Medley lasted a year and 
a half, and that it began with two columns in English and two in French, 
but finally changed to three of English. In numbers 29 and 30 the Medley 
is made to answer, explaining that “he” had been crippled by a Grubean, 
“J. Ninny Hammer, alias J. R.” [James Ralph]. This letter is answered 


by Bavius, who says the Society knows the Medley is dead; hence his 
letter must be forgery. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 107 


writers to exceed their subject; they by a peculiar felicity 


even 
De magnis majora loquuntur. 


Their chief excellence, he maintains, lies in fiction, and they 
show great skill in working up the truth with embellish- 
ments and surprising circumstances. In practically every issue 
the Grubstreet editors were at pains to insert at least one 
collation of various reports of a given bit of news. The di- 
vergence thus illustrated is ridiculous in the extreme. A 
correspondent in number 182, “Democritus,” submits a 
burlesque news column divided into domestic news, diseases, 
casualties, imports, exports, and foreign news—a mass of 
items ranging from the fantastic to the commonplace and 
unimportant. In number 184, Bavius himself comments at 
length on the newspapers. They are, he says, 

remarkable, and particularly those which make their appearance 
every morning in the week except on Sundays, and yield a most 
grateful entertainment to the curious. These five papers, like five 
stately fountains, are continually pouring out streams of fresh occur- 
rences which from time to time quench that ardent thirst after news 
which still returns and inflames a true British palate. And as the 
sources from whence these occurrences flow are secret and hidden 
like the springs upon which fountains are erected, so they are like- 


wise as inexhaustible as those; in both which respects the justness 
of the comparison is still more conspicuously evident. 


9 66 


He analyzes the “domestic advices,” ‘some of which are 
written more in the prophetic than historical style,” so that 
what should constitute one item, “may furnish out a decent 
paragraph . . . for two or three days together,” and help 
the necessary multiplication of articles. 

He also describes in numbers 187 and 188 the various 
styles of reporting. To illustrate the frequently pretentious 
manner of the journals, he submits a list of high flown 
phrases from the London Journal to show that “the dignity 
of the subject can warm the coolest reasoner and insensibly 
elevate the gravest prose into the most rational, because un- 
riming poetry.” It is their untrustworthiness and irresponsi- 
bility, however, that he finds most reprehensible. He speaks 


108 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


, 


of the “positive style,” which he says needs no explanation, 
and the “dubious style,” indicated by the openings, We hear, 
We are informed, It is said, and so forth,—useful in case 
of news which turns out later to be false or is known at the 
time to be false, but which the writer wishes the public to 
hear. Experienced readers, he suggests, never really believe 
such items. 

The universal carelessness in the reporting of deaths makes 
sport for a clever satirist in the Pegasus column in number 
260: 


There is no privilege in which the authors of our daily and weekly 
papers may more justly glory than that of the power of life and 
death. Whom they will they send to the grave, and whom they will 
they restore to life again. . . . The Archbishop of Canterbury, who, 
God be thanked, is still living, has often with pleasure and surprise 
read in these papers the account of his own death. 


The writer speaks of the innumerable generals and other 
notables killed off and then resuscitated by the papers, and 
recalls with glee how Bickerstaff inhumanly dispatched “poor 
Partridge untimely into the other world, in spite of his teeth 
and his own assertions to the contrary, solemnly protesting 
that he was not only alive some time after, but even at that 
very time when the advertisement of his decease was pub- 
lished.”’ It then transpires that the immediate occasion of the 
satire was an announcement in the Daily Post-Boy and the 
Daily Advertiser that Dr. Cockburn (actually, the late Dr. 
Cockburn) was to preach before royalty. The reverend 
gentlemen had also been revived by the Courant as Coobourn, 
and with a strange living. The royal preacher was in reality 
the Rev. Dr. Cobden, and—‘It is great pity but he [Dr. 
Cockburn] should now be suffered to sleep quietly in his 
grave.” 

As late as number 401, the Journal continued to harp on 
the irresponsibility of news writers. In reference to a notice 
that Joshua Ward would devote two “public days” at his 


? Later, in the preface to the Memoirs, he says that newsgatherers were 
paid by space for news, that their foreign news was full of errors in 
translations, and that “scarce one article of domestic news in ten but 
what is false, either in whole or in part.” 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 109 


hospital at Pimlico to the dispensing of medicine to the poor, 
the Journal asserts sarcastically that this is a likely story, 
since the patients at the hospital had all been turned out two 
months before, and the building closed. Similarly of a notice 
that a monument in the Abbey had fallen: “The invention 
or credulity of the collectors of news is very great. There is 
not the least truth in any part of this account; but it is like 
the story of the person’s lying all night with his bowels out, 
whom the crows hovered round to devour, inserted in the 
Daily Advertiser, August 22.” 

Intermingled with these frequent sarcasms on the exagger- 
ation and falsities of the news writers, are also comments 
on the triviality and silliness of much of the news. The bulk 
of the news, in fact, consisted on the one hand of murders, 
suicides, and other crimes of violence reported with as many 
horrible details as the writer could discover or imagine, and 
on the other of the activities of the socially great presented 
in minute detail and with the most deferential formality. 
In number 190 one finds an analysis of this latter category. 

First, it is said, come the doings of the royal family, 
whether they are dining at home or abroad, whether they 
walk, ride, or go on the water. Such news is valuable since 
it informs the public that the royal family is in health, and 
also since it gives entertainment to those of low station. 
Second come the activities of the nobility; their entertain- 
ments, births, deaths, and comings to town. At first glance 
such matter may not seem important, but it is very useful 
to tradesmen, who thus know the proper time to solicit cus- 
tom or the payment of bills. In the third place, (and with 
the most sarcasm) one finds preferments in church and 
state. Thus the public sees how well the younger sons of 
gentry and nobility are provided for, as well as the depend- 
ents of some few great men, and learns of the elevation of 
men of great parts, never heard of before. 

For the general reader, the news items are probably the 
most interesting section of the Journal. A large proportion of 
them were chosen for their sensational interest, and the lurid 


110 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


cast they give to life in the 1730’s is more than romantic. 
The callousness, not to say the brutality, of the age is re- 
flected in the gusto with which all the details of horrible 
accidents, suicides, and crimes are spread abroad for the 
edification of the public. Doubtless such material was re- 
printed in the Journal for its intrinsic value in attracting 
readers. An item in number 10, for instance, which is keyed 
no higher in its pitch of horror than others to be found in 
almost any issue, would surely have yellow journalistic value 
in any age, though it could not ordinarily be so vividly pre- 
sented. A surgeon having opened a vein in what was thought 
to be a dead body, and having carelessly left it open, “The 
next day he [the corpse] was found really dead, but with his 
legs drawn up, and a cold sweat on his face, with a large 
quantity of blood in his coffin.” 

Such crude horror was collected in all the dailies ; the chief 
distinction in the Journal’s news columns lies in the collation 
of news items, for sarcastic comment on which Russel’s vi- 
triolic pen was unusually well fitted.* Indeed, the cold cyni- 
cism of many of these collations and notes is, at first any- 
way, appalling. Would it be possible for instance for a news 
writer in any later age to report the death of a child, and then 
add calmly, as the Journal does in number 3, “This is the very 
child that was said to have died above a month ago; and was 
buried in the same grave with his mother, by several news- 
papers’? Or to remark (number 349) upon the death of 
twenty-five people in Edinburgh, poisoned by ratsbane in 
bread,—‘‘They will have no occasion to take Dr. Ward’s 
pill’? More fitting subjects for his wit were, however, 
legion, and on the whole these columns furnish a great deal 
of highly amusing information and comment on the life of 
the time. One could cite innumerable comments as neat as 

*In the earlier issues many of these notes were written by Martyn 
(“B”). That Russel’s cynicism was not altogether peculiar to him is 
shown perhaps by such a comment as the following in number 2, by 
Martyn. Of the news that a woman had been found dead in a coach 
house “among old lumber,” he says, ‘““The learned Dr. Zoilus [Bentley] 


thinks that there is an omission of the copyist in this place, and that we 
ought to read among other old lumber.” 


Lait week the Alfize, ended. at Sall{bary, when 4 per. 
fons received fentence of death; 2 were ordered to pe 
itraniported 5 1.ivus test in the mand for fhzes fealiag ; 
and Rob. Bullac and Daniel Croker, (the latter a Hackney 
Writer from Chintery-lane, who in this’ dearth of baf- 
nefs had flrolled down to Bath, and itole a Dirber’s waitt. 
coat) were coniicied of petty larcenies, and order'd to 
be whipt. ¢) ?.-—— Turis Hackney Writer rom Chancery- 
lane bad Letser bare flavéd cert, ana tacned Political 
Writer. 

Two young children of —-- Hafel, of Lineoin's-Ton‘ 
Efq; who were lately incculated for the Small pox, at his 
houfe in Bedford-Row, are fisice both dead. D P. —— 
Yeey are now secure fico the Small-pox in she common 
Taz. 

In the News Papers of the 2d inf. it was invidioufly 
infinuated, that moft of the cloaths worn at Court on his 
Majelty’s birth-day, were French filks: which is fo far 
from gruth, that by her Majefty’s Royal encouragement to 
the manufaCture:- to invent new patterns, the making of 
gold and filver ftuff, and the richeft filks, is brought to 
fuch perfe€tion in England as has never been excelled by 
the Freach ; and ail the Royal Family, and mot of the 
Nobility and Gentry, did do honour to the Manufaétu- 
ries of their own country, by appearing in them on that 
joyful oceafion. DP. ~ J did nat fee this circumpexcs absat 
the French filks mentioned in any cther News Paper of 
Mar, 2. but the LE. 

Yefterday a poor woman, who I fuppofe got up to ride, 

Fell ovt of a duft-cart, and immediacc’y died. 

Wenpwesvday, March 15. 

The Hon. Mrs. Mary Vane having laft week refigned 
her place of Maid of Honour to her Majefty, the Hon. 
Mrs. Martha Lovelace, only Sifter to the Right Hon. the 
Lord Lovelace, we hear is appointed to fuccecd her ia 
that ftation. D P. 

We hear that the books and papers belonging to the 
Charitable Corporation have been difcovered, and found 
concealed under a floor in a houfe in Broad-ftrect. D 7. 
—— It is Prange, they foould be be found concealed, 
after they bad been difcovered: but this happens some 
himee~ Loney 

Or funday laft the Envoys from Algier went to Wind 
for, where they dined, faw the Caitle, and return’d in 
the Evening to their Lodgings in Suffoik-fireet. DP. 
Yeilerday, on a man, and boy, hy coaches pat out of 

breath, 
The Coroner's Jury fate: their verdi@, Accidente! 
death. P. 








TYPICAL NEWS ITEMS 
(From Nwmber 115, March 16, 1732) 


“fh 





QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 11d 


that in number 7 on an obituary notice in the Craftsman con- 
cerning the relict of Admiral Hosier, “This lady, who has 
been so often mentioned in the newspapers, sometimes as 
alive, sometimes as dead, is, I believe neither; there never 
having been any such person in the world.”* Moreover, the 
sarcasm wherewith the editors, especially Russel, brought 
together and displayed the wildly divergent accounts of the 
same incident by various papers was certainly well employed, 
and should have been useful in checking the irresponsible and 
careless fabrications of the news hacks. Considering the 
nature of the newspapers and the newswriters, however, one 
can hardly imagine that such criticism had much effect on 
them. 

When we remember the quality of the journalists them- 
selves, we are not surprised at the material they produced. 
Apparently writing for the periodicals was one of the lowest 
and least desirable employments of that despised class, the 
hack writers. There is little doubt that Martyn and Russel 
themselves, Martyn a botanist, and Russel a clergyman and 
scholar, regarded the Journal as hack-work, or at best as a 
temporary side-issue. Allusions to journalists and reporters 
are almost uniformly contemptuous; their calling was one 
of last resort for literary starvelings. The figure in the follow- 
ing account in number 407 is representative. Some verses 
on “The political State” were brought to the Journal by a 
messenger who paid a half crown for their insertion. The 
editor of the Journal, thinking the verses might be made to 
apply satirically to his enemies the magazines, rewrote the 
title to include their names.° The messenger thereupon re- 
turned and demanded his half crown back, which was given 
him out of pity for his meagre appearance, and with the 
hope that his principal allowed him to keep it as a porter’s 
fee in addition to the other half-crown he had got for writing 
the verses. In addition are furnished descriptive details of 

*The writer goes on to explain that there was a Mrs. Dian Pritchard, 
who claimed to be the admiral’s widow and heiress. Occasionally such 


items were rather effectively turned into doggerel verse. 
* See 405. 


i THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


“the grim Rime-carrier,’’ doubtless intended to reveal his 
identity. 

The payment of the half-crown in this instance is sig- 
nificant. It is doubtless true that the papers paid for some of 
the material they published, since the bitterest complaint 
against the magazines was that they stole material which the 
original publishers had had to pay for. Still it is clear that 
for a consideration they would insert notices and articles, 
which appeared not as advertisements but as having editorial 
approval and sanction. A case in point is the history in num- 
ber 410 of a letter against the law restricting the sale of 
spirits. This letter had originally been taken to the London 
Evening Post, which demanded two guineas to insert it. 
The author then got it printed in the Grub-street Journal, 
number 407, and paid the London Evening Post three shil- 
lings to advertise it. The Post never printed the advertise- 
ment and thereby laid itself open to attack on the ground of 
failing in its original pretense of desiring to be serviceable 
to the public and of being attached “to Liberty and the 
country interest.” 

Among the attacks on general methods of writing news 
and articles for the journals are to be found a great many 
fulminations against particular papers. On the whole the 
Journal avoided politics, yet it came into occasional conflict 
with its colleagues on political issues, especially the excise, 
for which it had a virulent hatred. In general, however, it 
waited for a chance to quarrel until a paper, in an interval 
between political campaigns, perhaps, should have committed 
itself on some points in the arts or sciences. For instance, in 
number 193, Maevius (probably Russel) contributes an 
ironical panegyric of “Walsingham,” editor of the Free 
Briton. This person had declared that many who had only 
slight talent in art or science had gone far through education 
and encouragement. Maevius asserts that some, even, who 
were unsuitable because of the lack of proper education have 
gone far, and then cites Walsingham himself as one who 
without any real education has been practising the arts of 


OCA EES VI PEMODICALS 113 


politics and rhetoric the last three years, and has now taken 
up painting and sculpture. Then, in an ironical panegyric, 
he dissects an article from the Free Briton on the sculptor 
Rysbrack and attacks readers who have declared the article 
“an undigested heap of highflown tautologies,’ and have 
accused the author of “setting up rhetorical figures on the 
wrong end,” of being illogical, ungrammatical, inaccurate, 
and especially of committing one egregious blunder which 
ruined the whole article. Attached are “‘annotations on the 
Free Briton” by Bavius, pointing out the errors in question. 
This was followed in number 196 by a direct attack signed 
“P. P—re.”’ This correspondent wonders how enough copies 
of the Free Briton are sold to pay the printer, and thinks 
the chief reason must be the amusement derived from guess- 
ing at the meaning of Walsingham’s sentences. P—re also 
compares Walsingham to a pickpocket for reprinting Cato’s 
Letters and Temple’s Essays,® and thinks, from the delay 
in his death, which is expected momentarily, that he must 
be like one of those consumptives who linger on indefinitely. 

During the same period, late in 1733, the Journal also 
published a number of satirical attacks on “Francis Os- 
borne,” editor of the London Journal. In number 180 ap- 
pears an attack, signed ‘“Anglus,” on his logic in a political 
argument, and in number 195 another by “The Witch of 
Endor”’ on the weakness of a pronouncement wherein Os- 
borne had denied any religious attachment, claiming to be 
for all sects and against none. The Witch points out incon- 
sistencies and derides Osborne’s boasted independence. ‘Mrs. 
Osborne’s” patron, it is asserted, lately gave her two places, 
one of which she sold for £1100. The aspersion of the 
“Mrs.” evidently suggested a letter in number 201: 

* The custom of reprinting perfectly accessible and well known mate- 
rial was not uncommon. Naturally it was done in lean times. 

*This was Thomas Pitt, who commonly suffered from the perversion 
of his pseudonym into “Mother Osborne.” He was generally regarded 


as being in the pay of Sir Robert Walpole. See Nichols, Literary Anec- 
dotes, III, 649, where he is spoken of as writer of the Gazetteer. 


114 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Mr. Bavius—Whereas Mr. D’Anvers® and yourself, have, either 
erroneously or maliciously misrepresented me as a woman, by call- 
ing me Madam, Mrs., Goody, Dame, and Mother Osborne, this is 
to certify to the public that I am no woman, but as much a man 
as either of you: nay, | am so far from having an effeminate coun- 
tenance, that I look as fierce as Hamilcar, and can swear like a 
trooper. I hope you will show your impartiality by communicating 
this to the town in behalf of your injured Francis, not Frances, 
Osborne. 


This same point is further exploited in number 226 in a 
satirical fable by “J. T.’’® on a Mrs. Osborne, who, having 
failed in an attempt to influence her milkman’s vote, not only 
took away her custom but refused to pay his bill. Editorial 
comment on this fable asserts that their brother Osborne is 
hardly to be distinguished from the old lady, and then 
launches a series of innuendoes against his political sin- 
cerity.° 

Against the magazines, the Gentleman’s and the London, 
the Journal was especially bitter, for it regarded them as 
subsisting almost altogether on stolen goods. In number 168 
the Journal reviewed sarcastically and at length their his- 
tory. The cause of their invention was ironically declared to 
be the partiality of the post-office, which assisted some papers 
and hindered others. To remedy this defect and to bring 
order out of the chaos of newspapers, was established the 
Gentleman’s, now two years old. A year or more later was 
born the London Magazine, which imitated its elder brother 
closely and thus precipitated a bitter quarrel between them.** 

®*“Caleb D’Anvers,” editor of the Craftsman. 

° Initials sometimes used by Russel. 

* Note also, among others, an attack (340) on Fog’s and the London 
Evening Post for publishing false stories about clergymen, on the Post- 
Boy for printing verses stolen from the Grub-street Journal as the com- 
position of some Dublin wit (328), on the Universal Spectator and 
Whitehall Evening Post for somewhat similar offenses (179 and 204), 
and on the Daily Journal in connection with a theatrical quarrel (367 ff.). 

* Although the London Magazine reprinted a great deal from the 
Grub-street Journal, including many of the same articles as were taken 
by the Gentleman’s, the Journal did not hate it so fiercely as it did the 
Gentleman’s. In March and April, 1733, the London Magazine reviews the 


Journal’s charges against the magazines with evident delight in the as- 
sault on the Gentleman’s. In September, 1734 (III, 487), the London 


QUARKEES Wit PERIODICALS 115 


The important fact about both, Bavius continues, is their 
piracy. This charge was answered with a tu quoque by the 
Gentleman’s, in an advertisement which the Journal prints 
in number 169. Bavius (in numbers 171 and 172) retaliates 
with a finespun distinction between upright and downright 
piracy, and points out that the Gentleman’s is accused only 
of the latter. He also makes the point that fully half his 
Journal is original material. He defends himself rather un- 
convincingly by stating that the spoils of the Gentleman’s 
are much greater in amount and reiterates that the Journal 
contributes an element of originality in its collation of news 
items from the various papers. 

This defense Bavius repeated in number 210, in answer 
to a letter in which the Journal is referred to as “the 
original of all abbreviators of news.” He pointed out that 
the practice of taking news from the dailies was an old one 
but that it had not been usual to tell the source, or to present 
the various divergent accounts of the same event. The maga- 
zines continued to be a thorn in the side of the papers and 
provoked many complaints.'? Indeed their thefts were spoken 
of in the preface to The Memoirs of Grub-street as one of 
the chief reasons for the decline of the paper. The Gentle- 
man’s took formal notice of this complaint when it sum- 
marized the introductory essay from the Literary Courter 
of Grub-street:—‘‘The late Grubean Secretary, blind to his 
own faults, and prejudiced against our Magazine, to its 
success attributed the decay of his Journal. With the same 
view, he reprinted several charges against us in his Journal 


Magazine published verses on “Cavius and Bavius”—Cavius being Cave, 
of the Gentleman’ s— 

Cavius and Bavius differ but a letter; 

Compare their works, you'll understand ’em better. 

If Bavius dulness pleads, ’tis with design, 

But Cavius birthright pleads in every line. 

“These complaints continued to appear in later years of the Journal. 
In March, 1737, under poetical essays, the Gentleman’s reprints from the 
Daily Journal— 

Gainst filchers hear the pert Grubeans rail! 
Yet their own practice weekly is to steal. 

(To blab a secret, and enhance their shame) 
They filch the property of those they blame. 


116 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


of December 22,'? though they had been proved false in 
our Magazine for May last.” As a matter of fact the fre- 
quent abridgements by the Gentleman’s of Grubstreet articles 
was a compliment the Journal could ill afford to accept. 
While it bears witness to the Journal’s popularity, it very 
probably in time tended to reduce its circulation; obviously 
many patrons would stop subscribing if they could find the 
best of it condensed in a magazine. The Journal may well 
be granted some sympathy in its hostile attitude. 

These various squabbles and skirmishes with other peri- 
odicals, however, were of slight importance beside the major 
campaigns against the Weekly Register, the Hyp-Doctor, the 
Bee, and the Prompter. These battles, especially those with 
the three last papers, were sustained and continuous and 
almost extravagantly virulent. 

The Weekly Register seems to have survived, except for a 
few stray issues,* only in the pale reflection of its abridge- 
ments in the magazines. In its own day its enemy the Grub- 
street Journal frequently called it “obscure,” and Eustace 
Budgell says of it in the first issue of his Bee (February, 
1733), “The Weekly Register . . . has been on foot some 
time, and has perhaps been less taken notice of than it de- 
served; we have seen some good things in it, and hope our 
Bee may now and then get a little honey from it.’’ Good rea- 
son for the Journal’s hatred of the Register from the begin- 
ning appears in a dialogue between printer’s devils (number 
1481**). The Grubstreet devil says to the one from the Regis- 
ter: ““. . . your master had better never have undertaken 
that paper, which he published at first in opposition to my 
Grub-street Journal almost on the same model and on the 
same day, but he soon found that would not do, and changed 
the day to Friday, which proving unlucky as the other, he 


* The last issues of the Journal reprinted in installments the preface 
to The Memoirs of Grub-street. 

“In the Yale Library. There seems to be none at all in the British 
Museum, and an appeal to several special students of newspapers in 
England has proved unfruitful. 

“8 The Grub-street Journal Extraordinary, a special number, published 
October 30, 1732. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 117 


passed on to Saturday.” The Register appeared for the first 
time on April 19, 1730,1° and although the Journal frequently 
prophesied its decease, continued to exist until late in 1734, 
when the disappearance of its name from the list on the front 
cover of the Gentleman's Magazine would indicate its final 
collapse. Its editor is alluded to by the Gentleman’s Magazine 
as “Mr. Birch,’”?® probably the ‘““Tim Birch” who is the sub- 
ject of several contemptuous remarks in the Journal; but the 
author of the attacks on the Journal, ‘““A renegado who has 
been very illiterately scurrilous in an obscure weekly paper 
called The Weekly Register’ was revealed by Bavius in The 
Memoirs of Grub-street as “Mr. D. Bellamy.’’!7 James Ralph 
was also one of its writers; he contributed to it his rapid 
Survey of Public Buildings. 

Early in 1731 the Register published a series of attacks on 
the Journal. It gave a satirical etymology of the word Grub, 
and spoke of ridicule as a vice which was “contagious, and 
runs through the whole people; it wanders everywhere, like 
an ignis fatuus, and is only at home in the Grubstreet 
Journal.” The authors of the Journal are said to have 
“undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of 
being champions for politeness.’ It also derided the plan of 
the Journal, and especially its use of prints, “‘that the decor- 
ation may atone for other deficiencies, and children admire 
what men would not read.” In August, 1731, it renewed the 
assault. The Journal, it said, was in the pay of the opposition, 
with Fog’s and the Craftsman. A taunt that the Register’s 
scheme had been stolen from the Journal it calls an “impudent 
assertion” —‘“Their [the Journal's] scheme consists chiefly of 
scandal; every man of candour might be ashamed of it.” It 
cites instances of the Journal's low tone—its “maliciously 
prophesying the death of the Register in May last,” and its 
low shift of printing the picture of the Lord Mayor and the 


* See Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, IV, 95. 

penton: 

* Bavius especially ridicules “his great morality and religion,” and 
derides his projected edition in ballad metre of “fifty select moral Tales 
and Fables.” 

* Gentleman's Magazine, I, 12, and 69. 


118 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


arms of the City Companies. It announces that its own sales 
increase steadily, and ‘tis not in the power of the authors 
of the Grubstreet with all their popularity to say the same.’’'® 
Another criticism “against the Grubstreet authors” is noted 
by the Gentleman's Magazine,” but the only part reprinted 
consists of remarks on false prosody in a Latin poem on the 
Lord Mayor. 

The climax of the quarrel was reached in the Register’s 
issue of July 8, 1732,” under the heading “The Grub-street 
Journal Censured’— 


The Grub-street Journal has long subsisted very oddly, universally 
condemned, and yet universally read, conducted with the most con- 
summate dullness and infamous scurrility; a political or religious 
controversy has been its author’s daily bread for a month together ;?2 
and when the town has been sick of the subject, scandal and defama- 
tion have taken their turn, and are indeed the life of the paper. At 
its first outset, the authors of it insinuated?% that they fought under 
the banner of a celebrated poet, who then had a controversy with 
his minor brethren, and we fancied that the Dunciad and the Grub- 
street Journal were derived from the same original, and therefore 
no wonder that the paper was established e’er the cheat was dis- 
covered. Hence the scribblers of that paper took the liberty to abuse 
every gentleman whom Mr. P— had exposed in his Dunciad. And 
who were these formidable censors of the age? Why, a set of little 
physicians, non-juring parsons, and pert booksellers, such ignomin- 
ious low scribblers that they openly offered their paper to be the 
vehicle of scandal, and if any gentleman complained of his being 
ill treated, the publisher replied, “The paper was at their service the 
same way.” 


This forthright bludgeoning continues with an expression of 
surprise that ‘their infamous libels have not been answered 
with a cudgel rather than with a pen,” and an assertion that 
the immediate cause of the present diatribe was the Journal’s 
attack on the author of The Modern Husband,** “a gentle- 


” Gentleman's Magazine, I, 340, 368. (Italics inserted.) 

»® Gentleman's Magazine, I, 424. 

™ Gentleman’s Magazine, II, 844. 

2 The Journal did not, as has been said before, go in for politics. 

2 The Journal never gave the least hint that Pope was connected with 
it. The first official implication to that effect is in the preface to the 
Memoirs. The writer in the Register may mean that they insinuated it in 
private conversation. 

* Henry Fielding. The Gentleman’s, which evidently found this squab- 
ble amusing, reprinted a good deal of the Journal’s criticism of The 
Modern Husband. : 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 119 


man as much above their reputation as genius, who has too 
much sense and spirit to contend with so contemptible an 
adversary.””° To this the Journal retorted (number 141) 
with charges of plagiarism in the Register and with con- 
temptuous allusions to its authors, emphasizing as usual their 
obscurity.2® This concluded the quarrel with the Register 
itself ; although the Journal later criticized at length Ralph’s 
Survey of Public Buildings, which appeared serially in the 
Register, it passed by the paper itself and concentrated its 
fire upon Ralph. 

Most of the victims of the Grub-street Journal were scari- 
fied in its columns for a time, and then left in peace to forget 
and to heal their wounds. A quarrel like that with the Bee and 
the Prompter, or with such Dunces as James Moore-Smythe 
or James Ralph, flamed up in the bitterest of personalities 
for a few months or perhaps a year, and then subsided and 
yielded place to some newer controversy. The reason is 
obvious. In most cases the quarrel sprang from some imme- 
diate provocation like the publication of a satire or the crop- 
ping out of a scandal like the one over Tindall’s will,?” and 
when the utmost interest and life had been abstracted from 
it, like juice from a squeezed orange, it was dropped, and the 
editors cast their eyes about for a fresh one. 


> The Gentleman's Magazine speaks of this article as a reiteration of 
an earlier attack. “Dr. Quibus” of the Grub-street Journal is said to be 
“the old fellow who shows the tombs at Westminster,” since they have 
the same way of joking. He is also said to resemble one of his predeces- 
sors who remarked, on seeing a scaffold fall with a couple of laborers, 
who lay dying at his feet, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; 
for they rest from their labour, and their works follow them.”—A piece 
of grim humour of which the Journal would have been quite capable. 

© The Gentleman’s, which had a grievance of its own against the Reg- 
ister, annotated the Journal’s phrase, “an obscure weekly journal’—“He 
means the Weekly Register, the printer of which he charges in another 
place with inserting a poem from a Grub-street Journal above a year old, 
and with taking most of his copy from other papers. The said printer 
some months since asserted in his paper that the undertakers of the 
Gentleman’s Magazine slily endeavoured to obtrude their book, which 
had been subsisting eighteen months, in the room of one printed by him, 
which had not then been in being so many weeks. This we took no notice 
of before, because of the obscurity of the paper and the inconsistency 
of the assertion. For the same reason we overlook with contempt some 
other derogatory reflections, which carry with them their own conviction.” 

See post, p. 136 ff. 


120 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


The chief exception to this rule was that extraordinary 
and unabashed mountebank, the Orator John Henley. It may 
be said that he was a natural object for the Journal’s satire, 
since he was already ignominiously enrolled among the num- 
ber of the Dunces, but it is doubtful if this fact had much to 
do with the case. Henley was in truth almost the richest vein 
that the editors of such a paper as the Journal could hope to 
discover for exploitation. During the whole period of the 
Journal’s existence and long after, he was continually and 
brazenly in the public eye. With his pen and with his own 
voice he was continually roaring his own praise, or propound- 
ing some strange opinion in religion or science which cried 
out for satiric attack. Moreover, what is even more to the 
point, he undertook to be versatile, and explored many fields, 
so that he was continually furnishing new sensations of a 
fresh flavor, and thus helped to keep his opponents from 
becoming uninteresting and hackneyed. Hence it is not sur- 
prising to find his name continually in the Journal. There is 
no period in the paper’s history except at the very beginning 
when he is not held up to ridicule for one extravagance or 
another. In fact the custom of lampooning him was continued 
during the brief life of the Journal’s sequel, the Literary 
Courier of Grub-street. 

The Journal’s only significant allusions to Henley during 
1730 consist of brief sarcasms upon his assurance. In com- 
menting?® on one of Henley’s typical puffs that he was to 
compete “for the prize of the next question in the French 
Academy,” Bavius remarks, ‘“That he has assurance for such 
an attempt is what no one will doubt ; that he has the capacity 
is what everyone will.”?° This was followed in the next issue 
by an ironical disclaimer to the effect that the preceding refer- 
ence had been inserted by a person who happened to be at the 
printing office when the paper was composed. It had not been 
authorized by a member of the Grubstreet Society, none of 
whom would have ventured such a remark, since Henley’s 


*8 Number 36. 
* Ascribed to Russel. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 121 


capacity “for any such attempt or undertaking whatever” 
was beyond doubt. This sounded a note on which the Journal 
was to harp frequently in later years, but at present the edi- 
tors did not seem to be interested in coming to loggerheads 
with the Orator. 

On December 15, 1730, however, Henley launched the first 
number of that strange semi-weekly effusion, the Hyp-Doc- 
tor, in which he remarks, “Caleb [D’Anvers] is my Harle- 
quin, Fog my Boot-catcher, and Dr. Quibus [one of the 
imaginary editors of the Grub-street Journal] is my knight 
of the pestle, or as the vulgar has it, my apothecary.” In the 
second number, apropos of Bavius’ attacks on Cibber, just 
elected laureate, he says— 


Bavius is hypt at Colley Cibber’s bays 
And IS a duller fool than those HE only plays. 


War between Henley and the Journal began in good earnest 
in the Journal’s issue for March 11, 1731, number 62, and 
raged hotly during the rest of that year and the early months 
of 1732, Henley on his side fighting back in the columns of 
his Hyp-Doctor and in the advertisements, chiefly in the Daily 
Journal, of his Oratory Discourses. Whether the discourses 
themselves fulfilled the promises of their advertisements, it 
is now impossible to say. In its issue for March 11, 1731, the 
Journal published an “Essay on Impudence,” of which Hen- 
ley was palpably the subject. Henley at once advertised that 
his next subject for public discourse would be an apology for 
wit and that he expected one Dr. M[artyn] who called him 
impudent in print, to dispute on that problem. Consequently 
the next Journal contained the comment, 

I wonder Mr. Henley should make an unnecessary apology, and that 
he should be offended at being called impudent, since it was plainly 
showed in our last that impudence comprehends all qualifications. 
. . . If the problem intended be either whether Mr. Henley has wit 


or whether he has impudence, I deny that either is a problem, and 
consequently any matter of dispute. 


Russel (‘‘M”’) declared that he could not guess whom Henley 


” 


was referring to in his “M ,’ and in the Pegasus col- 





122 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


umn filled in the gap as “Mitchell.” In the Hyp-Doctor for 
March 23, 1731 (number 15), Henley then published “A 
letter from Johnny Martin (once a Book-keeper, now a 
botanist and snail-picker )”—animadversions on a Grubstreet 
article on political weather—and speaks of low uses for 
which he reserved “‘the ingenious Mr. Gilliver’s, Dr. Martin’s 
and Mr. Russel’s Weekly productions.” 

In the next issue, in a description of certain “birds”, he 
says, 

Under the scarecrows were listed the cuckoos, who sits [sic] on other 
birds eggs; these represented Gillivers, who hatch all from other 
author’s papers: There was a runt with the name R—I on his side; 
he and a black Martin kept close together: they lived upon catching 
flies and eating spiders, ...a Tomtit that set up for a mighty 
songster and warrior; the letters on his side were Pope.?°® 

In the same connection he reveals R—1 in the note “Runt 
Russel, one of Gilliver’s news brokers.” 

In number 21, the “Grubs,” as Henley called the Society at 
the Pegasus, are said to have “‘sent to pygmy P-pe to be their 
president,” and are again accused of stealing their material. 
In number 23, Henley professed to give “part of the char- 
acter of two Grub writers.” The first of these is Pope, at- 
tacked for his corrosive malice and his physical deformity, 
but ‘“‘his bow, as his back informs you, is too weak, and his 
arrows too short and blunt.” The second is Russel— 


A mouse-eaten shred of an author who was once a go-between to 
two doctors of the holy league, when Friar Bungy’s dance was 
playing, and the Duke of Ormond wrapt his sword in Irish wool to 
prevent its being run on the French; he then wrote a poem (as he 
says himself, for none else knows the secret) called the Impeach- 
ment; which just appeared like Bateman’s ghost in a white sheet, 
frighted the house with a dismal groan and vanished. He was of the 
college of Magdalen unconverted, before the legion was cast out of 
her, and as the devil has his name from false accusation, he is a 
descendant from the expelled tenants. . . . but it is impossible to cut 
him or his wit shorter than they are. 


This is indeed a cryptic style, but the general intent is plain, 
as well as the fact that Russel is accused of political activity 


*° Allusions to Pope appear also in numbers 4 and 8. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 123 


at the time of the Duke of Ormond’s ill-fated escapade of 
1719. The allusion to Magdalen and its Jacobite, non-juring 
tendencies is probably a mistake of Henley’s ; Russel is clearly 
recorded a member of University College. In this same article 
are references to an attack on “Robert Stephen’s book.’ It 
will be remembered*! that Thomas Martyn speaks of Russel’s 
having been concerned with his father in a new edition of 
that work. 

The attack is more general in number 31, where it is 
declared, ‘“The Grubs, who are the sediments of sense, the 
dregs of the cask, have robbed two pamphlets and three 
papers last week to serve them up cold and mangled bar- 
barously, in their two-penny ordinary,”—this in a list of the 
shortcomings of the newspapers. Thus Henley’s jibes run on, 
with remarks on the history and the mental and physical 
qualities of Pope, Martyn, and Russel, and declarations of 
the rottenness of the Journal, and its always imminent dis- 
solution. In number 38, Henley tells his readers that 
the worm eaten vessel that has been carrying the Grubs over that 


dreadful gulf, the long vacation, is at present sinking, as appears 
from their late unfortunate squeak complaining to the world that 


they cannot get their papers into the country. ... They are now 
pumping for life in a foul hold and leaky bottom. . . . Poor Grub! 
Can nothing be done for him. . . . We shall have these Journal 


daubers in a short time stationed at the corner of Whitehall Gate 
to cry buns and penny-books together. 

A letter signed J. Pelle in number 48 announces “credible 
information that the beginner of the Grub Paper as it is 
called was a papist, Mr. P—pe, who intended it to continue 
his Dunciad, where he says very courtly—Dunce the Second 
reigns like Dunceé the First. That the main writers have been 
two professed non-jurors, M—n and R—1.” After accusing 
the Journal of theft in number 54, and referring to Bavius 
as “‘small-hopes,”’ Henley turned his attention in number 56 
to Martyn. 

I had a footman named Martin. I called him Martin Mar-all; he 


thought himself privileged to wear my castoff jests, as well as my 
livery; and at last the rogue stole a pocket-book of my minutes, ran 


* See ante, p. 40. 


124 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


away from me, and has been murdering my original jibes ever since 
in a society called the Grubs, that is the worms, the Grub-worms. 
Picking such worms from herbs and salads he calls botany. These 
worms peep out in paper, but the last snow before Christmas killed 
multitudes of them, and the rest are in a very poor starveling con- 
dition. 

In number 59 comes Henley’s own account of the origin 
of the Journal; he declares it to be an imitation of his own 
highly successful Chimes of the Times, from which the Grub 
editors took “not only his scheme, but his thoughts, and 
racked and mangled them in their paper. . . . The goods are 
found upon these plagiaries and buccaneers.” He also gives 
a fantastic genealogy of .the editors—‘‘Martins the shrub and 
Russels the dwarf-elder,”’ and insists that as they could get 
no book advertisements for their paper they had to fill space 
with advertisements of their own. In the same tone is the 
statement in an issue of July 11, 1732, that when a Grub- 
street Journal was put with “a newt, the author of it,” in a 
vacuum pump, it swelled up and looked like Dicky R-s-l, and 
puffs appeared of Vida’s Latin poems,®? and so forth, and 
“Rare Plants” by Dr. M n. Plagiarism is again charged 
in number 84, where various stolen articles are described as 
being seen through a magic telescope in the rooms of Dicky 
Russel in College Street, Westminster; and in number 87 
it is asserted that the Journal exists only to “make fritters” 
of news; everything in it is false—the last issue ends with a 
false fact, namely that it “was never scandalous, whereas 
Scandal is and ever has been the length, breadth, and depth 
of it: it requires a very large cavo-fango to cleanse the mud 
of that excremental paper.” In number 88, Henley imitated 
the Journal’s usual statistics on the Hyp-Doctor with “Cas- 
ualties of the Grub-street Journal for the month of July last,” 
and in succeeding issues makes passing allusions to the 
editors, notably in number 92, “non-jurors, as MARTYN 
and RUSSEL,” and in number 94, where he asserts that 
Runt Russel gets half a guinea for writing two Journals. 

The personal attacks on Russel continue. Number 100 





* An edition by Russel. See ante, p. 43. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 125 


is given up to a fantastic description of the Journal and its 
vices, and reasserts that the writer’s real name is Dicky Rus- 
sel of College Street, Westminster, and that he comes up to 
Temple Bar every Thursday, “‘like a wet weazel creeping and 
jumping along the skirts of a common sewer to take the air.” 
Various details of his private life are disclosed ;—he keeps a 
boarding house for boys of Westminster School (number 
101); he was once a supporter of Sacheverell (number 
105) ; he is a non-juring clergyman of North Street, West- 
minster, late of College Street, was once the author of a 
poem called the Impeachment, and is now working on 
“Stephanus’s Thesaurus and bales of Barnabas’s Epistles” ; 
he is a “runt in criticism, as in stature’ (number 110) ; he 
shows his lack of scholarship in his attacks on Cibber’s odes 
(number 112). After this, however, the strife died down; 
and except for a very occasional comment, as when proper 
notice was taken of Runt Russel’s assertion that the Hyp- 
Doctor was an “unintelligible, neglected paper” (number 
128) and he was alluded to as “‘a broken, non-swearing but 
all-lying parson of North-street, Westminster” (number 
152), his name disappeared from the insane columns of the 
Hyp-Doctor. 

These characteristic utterances in the Hyp-Doctor Henley 
supplemented with his even more fantastic advertisements. 
For instance, in the Daily Journal for March 23, 1731, Hen- 
ley advertised his attack on Martyn in the Hyp-Doctor, num- 
ber 15, and again in the Daily Journal for March 27, he 
added to his advertisement the note :-— 

We, the wits and poets undermentioned did not design in our last 
advertisement against the Hyp-Doctor to detract from his merit 
which we acknowledge, but only to sell our own heavy trash . . . to 
vent our ill humor ... in the foul language which is our ele- 


ment. ... As we are only apes of humour we can’t help being 
mischievous. L. Sillicur and A.?3 Ruselle. 


Similar outbursts appeared in the advertising columns of 
Fog’s Journal for April 10 and several succeeding issues, 


* Misprint for R? 


126 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


where Henley announces especially a refutation of Martyn’s 
botanical ideas. His defense against his detractors will, he 
says, be postponed until Wednesday in Easter week, “when 
the town may, God willing, depend on something very par- 
ticular, especially as to Dr. M—-s definition of a plant.” He 
also promises, in Fog’s for April 17, a defense, “especially 
against the atheistical, obscene reflections of some enemies, 
after which will be a specimen of his philosophy on Mr. 
M—-s first botanic 1—e,** proving it erroneous and incon- 
sistent, from the aloes to the stinging nettle, that he has not 
botany imPLANTed in him.” Henley also made fantastic 
and cryptic allusions in his advertisements in the Daily Jour- 
nal to a “battle of the birds” at Richmond, e.g., “We, the 
apparitions, sprites, and stuffed mawkins of a buzzard, runt, 
etc., slain in the Battle of the Birds last Tuesday, humbly 
and unfeignedly retract”—and there follows an apology to 
the Hyp-Doctor signed by the strange company of “Jigguni- 
bob Gilliver, Skewball Scoggin, Runt Russel, Bear Garden 
Bickham and Company.”%® Neither did Henley hesitate to 
impute to Pope an interest in the encounter, and accordingly 
to load him with outlandish abuse. He speaks of discussing 
“the whim that his writings are not his own, yet good for 
nothing,” “his Amours,’’*® “the falsehoods of Alexander 
Pope, Esq. of Twickenham; the assistance reported by one 
Mr. Savage on that head.’’** Henley also seems to have sus- 
pected Dr. Arbuthnot as a conspirator against him, for in 
one of his strange utterances he lights upon the latter’s “late 
essay on aliment and physic.’’3* It was Russel, however, that 
he seems to have regarded as the head and forefront of the 

* The first lecture of a course of Botany being an introduction to the 
rest. By John Martyn, F. R. S. 1729. This lecture bears the imprimatur 


of Hans Sloane, P. R. S., and is the lecture referred to in the Journal, 
67 (see post, p. 128). 

® Who “Skewball Scoggin” was it seems impossible to say. “Bear- 
Garden Bickham” may possibly have been James Bickham, later junior 
tutor of Emanuel College, who was “a bold man, and had been a bruiser 
when young”. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, VIII, 420. 

Daily Journal, April 21, 1731. 

** Daily Journal, May 5, 1731. 

** Daily Journal, May 11, 1731. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 127 


cabal. The abuse of Russel is continuous; evidently all the 
few details of his history and his customs which were dis- 
coverable, and some which were only guessed at, were set 
forth in an attempt to discredit him and the Journal. In an 
advertisement in the Daily Journal, May 11, it is said, 

We hear the oratory subject for tomorrow evening . . . will be the 
Lady of the May, with the history of the Silly Curs continued in a 
challenge to Mr. Russel, who is hired to revile Mr. Henley weekly; 
the said Russel’s principles, the reasons for his caluminating [sic] 


Mr. Henley as well as others by name, and particularly his parts, 
learning, and honesty, brought to the Touchstone. 


Again the next day, he refers to “‘the ninnies hackneyed to 
rail at Mr. Orator, particularly that go-between Mr. Russel, 
the Runt, his principles and mean, ungenerous practices 
against Mr. H , ... In his mouthings from his Ora- 
tory tub, Henley probably outdid even his written effusions 
in the Hyp-Doctor and the Daily Journal. 

During all this chatter in the Hyp-Doctor and Henley’s 
advertisements, the Journal had continually irritated Henley 
with ironical pin-pricks. While Henley turned all his atten- 
tion to exposing the personalities of the Grub writers, the 
Journal on its side dodged his imputations or met them 
vaguely, but retorted with damaging suggestions concerning 
his character and abilities. It followed up the attacks in num- 
bers 62 and 63 with a parody of Henley’s advertising 
style?®9— 





Shortly will be published in prose and rime after the manner of 
Satan’s Game Cock whose name begins with a Hen and ends with 
a Ly. 

I. Whether all the felons that have been hanged at Tyburn for 
five years past were not honester and handsomer men, juster 
both in action and speech, and better grammarians, than the 
bull-beef orator. 

II. Whether to praise the same people for twopence be right 
That once were abused for twelvepence a night. 
III. Whether this news could of being acceptable fail: 
We have a general peace, and H— is in jail. 
N.B. Is not he a silly cur 
To abuse Lawton Gilliver ? 


Tn number 64. 


128 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Succeeding issues of the Journal abound in allusions and 
retorts of a similar nature. In a burlesque almanac for April, 
blustering weather is prophesied for All-fools day, the final 
ravings of “an eminent Grubean orator . . . he will die 
the 29th.”*° Of a “‘Curlean” advertisement that the Hyp-Doc- 
tor ‘will not be sold shortly under double-price,” the Journal 
insinuates that it is probably true—it won’t be sold at all. 
It notes a repetitious issue of the Hyp-Doctor,*! and asks if 
the imposition on Christians of cabbage “‘twice-boiled, cold, 
and without any vinegar” on a Saturday in Lent is accord- 
ing to ‘Apostolic Constitution and Canons.’’*? Henley’s style 
is said to serve as a model of baby talk for nurse-maids, and 
the possibility of turning all the Oratory Discourses into 
rime is canvassed.*? There are frequent plays and retorts on 
Silly Cur, Henley’s name for Gilliver, publisher of the Jour- 
nal. To Henley’s attempted sarcasms on Martyn’s botanical 
lecture the Journal replied, 

Mr. President said he took the person hinted at under the name of 
Dr. M— to be one who had published a pretended Lecture of Botany 
about two years ago, under which pretense he had scandalously 
abused several members of our society, in his allegorical definitions. 


That of a Plant in particular he always took to be levelled at the 
character of Mr. H. 


Then follows a detailed explanation of the allegory of Hen- 
ley and the Plant.** Henley is reported*® to have taken three 
or four papers of Dr. Quibus’ Cephalic Snuff, which threw 
him into a fit of elocution and removed a large brainworm 
similar to the one James Moore-Smythe had suffered from.*® 


* See 65. In 122 is copied a news item falsely reporting the death of a 
member of Parliament named Henley, with the comment “This was Mr. 
Orator Henley: Mr. Auditor Henley [the M. P.] We Hear is still alive, 
tho in a weak condition.” 

“ Number 15. 

_ * Number 65. 

“Number 66. 

*“ Number 67. This lecture of Martyn’s was of course a serious pro- 
fessional production, although the application to Henley is burlesque. 
The phrases quoted from it in mock seriousness in 67 appear exactly in 
the lecture as Martyn originally published it. 

* Number 70. 

* See Grub-street Journal, 26, and ante, p. 62. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 129 


To Henley’s complaint that the Grub-street Journal—“mur- 
derer of all decency,” did not even spare his deceased father 
in its assaults on him, the Journal replied with the statement 
that it had not cast the least reflection on his father, “unless 
it were one to mention him as the father of such a son.’’47 
A “Blind Orator” was invented to serve as a rival to Henley, 
and was praised for his modesty, simplicity, lack of avarice, 
and so on.*® A news item that Henley had bravely driven off 
two foot-pads, was capped by Russel with the couplet (num- 
ber 87)— 


Illiterate rogues who thus attacked th’ Orator 
Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator. 


These squibs and many others like them were accompanied 
by several more detailed analyses of Henley’s weak points. 
For example, in number 69 the Journal abridged Henley’s 
own account of his life published in his Oratory Trans- 
actions*® and signed “A. Welstede.’”’ A few italicized quota- 
tions served sufficiently to reveal the absurd assurance of this 
biography—e.g., “Mr. H. has given in his youth more dem- 
onstrations to the public of his desire to improve himself and 
the world than all his antagonists put together.” The Journal 
adds, ‘“The scandalous author of the Dunciad, an inveterate 
enemy of our whole society, has set this eminent member in 
another light,” and quotes The Dunciad, III, 

But where each science lifts its modern type, 
Embrown’d with native bronze, lo, Henley stands, 


Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. 
How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung !— 


The author of the earlier “Essay on Impudence”’ also re- 
turned to the charge in number 71, with a leading article in 
ironical praise of all Henley’s various exhibitions, and then 
to prove finally that Henley deserved “the palm of effront- 


“ Number 79. 

*S Numbers 78 and 84. 

* Oratory Transactions, No. 1. To be occasionally published by J. 
Henley, M. A. London, printed in the year 1728. The second item is “A 
Narrative by Mr. Welstede.” Pope pretended to confuse “A. Welstede” 
with Leonard Welsted. See Dictionary of National Biography. 


130 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ery,’ reviewed his French and Italian grammars, thus ex- 
posing his complete ignorance of his subject. It appears 
clearly that he transcribed from other books and often 
coupled a translation with the wrong original. For instance, 
“Date melo—Send it to us.’’°° 

Although the attack was prosecuted most vigorously dur- 
ing the first three years of the Journal, it was never allowed 
to die down. Statistics of “hyp-Oratorical Puffs’ were 
regularly presented for each month,°? and epigrams both in 
verse and prose were sufficiently frequent to keep the Orator 
continually before the Journal's readers. Indeed in its last 
gasps, the paper took up the quarrel again with all its original 
animosity ;—the six final numbers are replete with jibes at 
him. 

From beginning to end, Henley’s assurance and impudence 
were emphasized as his distinguishing characteristics. That 
is of course the purpose of the regular monthly puff-statistics. 
Apparently the Journal never missed an opportunity to prick 
the bubbles of reputation which Henley was continually try- 
ing to inflate. Late in 1732°° he had the impertinence to 
write a defense of his Discourses wherein he claimed the 
approbation of three learned men—Dr. Baker, Bishop 
Hutchenson, and Montfaucon.°? In the Journal it is made 
clear that the letters from these three all deal with Henley’s 
grammars, were written years before he established his Ora- 
tory, and that, as it was, they contained no recommendation 

° The Complete Linguist, or, an universal grammar of all the consider- 
able tongues in being ... Collected from the most approved hands. To 
be published monthly, till the whole is perfected. London, 1719-1721. 7 
numbers from Spanish to Chaldee. These grammars are the thinnest kind 
of compilation. The Grub-street Journal’s quotations and instances are 
accurate. The French grammar consists of 63 pages, octavo, in large 
type. It ends, “A master, dictionary, reading the best authors, practice, 
and conversation will supply the remainder.” 

* Note in 160, “A bill of Hyp-oratorical mortality for the year 1732. 

. all these, both puffs and advertisements, died immediately after 
birth, having in vain cried out for help, and had nothing Christian at 
their first appearance or exit, neither baptism nor burial.” 


See 153. 
The Journal made the typical corrections, Mr. Baker and Bishop 


Hutchinson. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS TS 


or favorable criticism, but were merely formal and con- 
ventional letters of acknowledgement. It is also demonstrated 
that the eminent men whose approval Henley had claimed 
in his preface had in reality never recommended him at all. 
What, for example, Henley had called “an attestation in 
favour and recommendation” by Bishop Burscough resolved 
itself into his employment years before as an assistant 
preacher (number 156). The limits to which Henley’s ef- 
frontery carried him are indicated by the advertisement in 
Fog’s Journal—‘‘As bishops and people now own the oratory 
is the only true religion of Britain, the scandal of a few 
desperate enemies is not worth notice;’”®* upon which the 
Journal remarked, “I wonder my brother will prostitute his 
paper to be the vehicle of such an impudent lie.” 

Although Henley ceased after a time to reply to the Jour- 
nal in the Hyp-Doctor, he continued occasionally to argue 
with it at the Oratory and in his advertisements. In number 
154 and the following issues the Journal managed to work 
up a squabble over Henley’s generally peculiar manner of 
expression as illustrated in his advertisement in Fog’s Jour- 
mal, “In the Scripture, the rule of preaching, are above a 
thousand burlesque passages, which renders it strictly religi- 
ous in its turn.” The Journal declared this “as irreligious as 
ungrammatical and nonsensical,’ and in the ensuing squab- 
ble, Henley reiterated some of his earlier personalities con- 
cerning Russel, which drew the rejoinder (number 158): 
“Mr. H’s affirmation that Mr. R. is writer of the Grub is 
not only false in itself, but likewise contrary to his own re- 
peated assertions, in which he has ascribed that paper to sev- 
eral persons whom he has defamed with false and scandalous 
imputations, for which it is probable they may hereafter call 
him to an account.”°° 

That the Journal and its editors fixed themselves in Hen- 

*@ See 177. In 197 is an account of a challenge by Henley to all bishops 
and divines to argue with him at his Oratory. 

* A similar squabble took place some four years later on the subject 


of the word pridial. Henley had now founded The Gentleman’s Proper 
University. See 376, 377, 378. 


132 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ley’s memory is clear from his pamphlet, Why, how now, 
Gossip Pope, published later, when the paper had long 
been dead. He refers to it as ‘‘a continuation of the Dunciad 
transposed,” and speaks of ‘““Mr. Savage surnamed the Half- 
hanged,®® one that continued your prose Dunciad in the 
Grub, with Russel the non-juror that wrote the Impeach- 
ment.” Of the Journal itself he says it “was the offspring 
of your muse, and a sweet-tempered babe it was.” Like many 
other victims of the Journal, Henley makes Pope’s associ- 
ation with the paper the reason for its attacking him, 
although Pope had probably almost severed his direct con- 
nection with it by the time the continuous attacks on Henley 
began. 

The large amount of Henley material in the Journal 
bears eloquent testimony to the character of the victim. He 
was always active, absolutely and recklessly brazen, and ever 
about to undertake some new venture that proved more 
ridiculous than his last. He richly deserved the sarcasms in 
the Journal. There has been some attempt to present Henley 
as a genius gone astray, but very few of the arguments to 
this end are sustained by enough evidence to be convincing. 
Indeed, the statements of ‘‘A. Welstede” (Henley himself) 
have been taken at their face value to prove Henley’s emi- 
nence as a schoolmaster and a scholar.®? It does appear that 
Henley was a clever youth who was regarded by university 
tutors with some favor, but he was always obstreperous, 
and showed early signs of a charlatanism which soon passed 
all bounds. His stronghold lay in his combination of tireless 
energy and invention with superb impudence. Certainly by 
1730 he was a thoroughgoing fraud and a proper butt for 
the not too gentle shafts of the Grub writers. 

The Journal's quarrel with Eustace Budgell and Aaron 
Hill, or, in other words, with the Bee and the Prompter 
took another tone. Henley was regarded as a low, ignorant 


°° A few years earlier, Savage had been condemned to death for a 
homicide, but had been reprieved through interest in high quarters. 

*™ See especially the Retrospective Review, Series I, XIV, 206, and I. 
Disraeli, Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, (London [1881]). 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 133 


mountebank, and the attacks on him, though they were vio- 
lent enough, generally betrayed a tinge of condescension and 
tolerant contempt. Such a tone was out of the question in 
dealing with Aaron Hill, and even with Budgell, in spite of 
his unbalanced intellect. For Budgell, although he was bom- 
bastic and extravagant, was not a mountebank, and when 
stirred to frenzy by the heat of battle spoke with marked 
directness and force. Consequently the controversy which 
began with the Bee and continued with the Prompter was 
especially savage and bitter. Budgell, and later Hill and his 
colleague Popple, wrote as plainly and strongly as they knew 
how ; in fact they frequently rivalled Swift in the robustness 
of their invective. The Journal, on its side, while it fought 
as usual from behind a screen of anonymity, and employed 
its ordinary weapons of irony and cold sarcasm, at times 
evinces an interest in its retaliation which smacks of actual 
hatred. As a result, among all the Journal's major campaigns 
this is perhaps the most ruthless. 

Budgell’s name had appeared several times in the earlier 
issues of the Journal, but the paper’s attitude toward him 
had been amused and indifferent rather than definitely 
hostile. The publicity it gave him was not, however, of a 
desirable sort, and it may be supposed that a saner person 
than the erratic, half-crazy Budgell would have been at 
least somewhat resentful. As it was, he seems to have held 
no grudge, for in the first number of the Bee, in a descrip- 
tive catalogue of his various contemporaries, he says, after 
granting the Journal the first place in its particular class, 
“The person thought to be at the head of this paper is Mr. 
R 1, anon-juring clergyman. Mr. P——e and some other 
gentlemen are likewise suspected to have wrote some pieces 
in it. Whoever the authors are, they have shown upon several 
occasions that they want neither wit nor learning.” 

The Journal’s earlier allusions to Budgell concern his 
political activities, but stress especially the question of his 
sanity. For instance in “Pegasus in Grubstreet,” in number 
16, one reads, ‘We are informed that Eustace Budgell, Esq., 





134 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


appeared on Tuesday at St. James, where without any intro- 
duction he presented a memorial to His Majesty, and after- 
ward made a surprising speech to him, in which among other 
things he complained of the present ministry.’’°® A letter 
from Swift to Pope, January 15, 1731, seems to represent 
the usual attitude his acquaintances took toward him. Swift 
says he has heard 

... lately from Mr. Budgell, the direction a feigned hand, and 
enclosed to Mr. Tickell. He desires I would write to some of my 
great friends in England to get him into the House of Commons 
there, where he wiil do wonders. What shall I do? I dare not answer 


him, and fear he will be angry. Can nobody tell him that I have no 
great friends in England, and dare not write to him? 


The Journal also published a number of letters®® in a dis- 
pute between Budgell and one William Piers, a former op- 
ponent of Budgell’s in a lawsuit over a piece of landed 
property. The resumption of their dispute was due to Bud- 
gell’s statement of his case in his pamphlet, A Letter to Cleo- 
menes, King of Sparta. Piers, in the London Evening Post, 
June 12, 1731, declared this statement to be absolutely false, 
and intimated that Budgell’s suspected insanity was the best 
excuse for what he had written. This letter the Journal re- 
printed and with it an answer by Budgell, wherein he repre- 
sents Piers as a tool used to embarrass him in his public 
career. He declares that Piers, like his other opponents in 
lawsuits, is supplied with money for this purpose. He hopes 
that no one will ever have to undergo such unheard of perse- 
cution as that he suffers, but asserts that if he dies in confine- 
ment he will leave memoirs behind him. Twice again he used 
the Journal as a channel of reply to another letter of Piers 
in the Daily Courant, July 22, 1731. The burden of these 
letters is the wickedness of Piers and the martyrdom of Bud- 
gell :—Piers is dishonest; he is the tool of “those who assist 
him and skulk behind his name,” that is, the political forces 
in league to destroy Budgell; he is hypocritical and only 
feignedly pious. Budgell himself, on the other hand, is per- 


® See also numbers 20, 39, 56. 
In numbers 78, 82, 83. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 135 


secuted just as the patriot Pulteney was, trying to do his 
poor country a service. ‘The best of it is, the whole world 
sees through these plots.”’ The Journal took no side in this 
quarrel, but merely allowed Budgell to express himself and 
to make apparent his delusions of grandeur and persecution. 
It is hard to believe, however, that it had much sympathy 
with him, in view of the remarks about him published earlier, 
as well as two later sarcastic comments,®° in both of which 
his name is linked with Henley’s. The first is an epigram on 
a projected pamphlet by Budgell— 


I think the booksellers of Mr. Budgell 
For his and their own reputation judge ill 
To blow his works about with puff on puff 
As if they were Hyp-Oratory stuff. 


The second noted the aptness of initiating Budgell into 
masonry on a Saturday and Henley on a Sunday—“As the 
gentleman of the law was initiated into the mysteries of 
masonry on the Jewish sabbath, the burlesque orator of the 
gospel was initiated on the Christian. . . .” 

When Budgell decided to join the ranks of the magazine 
compilers and publish the Bee,*! he enrolled himself among 
those whom the Journal regarded as its active enemies. If he 
still had any uncertainty as to the Journal’s regard for him, 


© See 122 and 167. 

* The Bee seems never to have been a flourishing venture. The Journal 
continually gibed at its feebleness. The following gossip from the Lon- 
don Magazine, May, 1733, is corroborative: “Mr. J., one of Mr. Bud- 
gell’s drawn in Gulls (alias Partners) did honestly declare to Mr. H., 
another Gull before a large company of booksellers at a public auction 
in Paternoster Row, that after sending out no. 2 of the Bee they were 
most of them returned him the next day, with a prohibition from his 
customers to send no more. He further added that ‘He himself perceived 
it was such sad trash and a piracy so barefaced, that he was ashamed 
of being concerned in it; and neither could nor would encourage so 
scandalous a practice any longer.’ This was verbatim Mr. J—s speech to 
his brother H. and the company. Mr. M. [another partner] soon found 
out the fraud . . . and threw up his share of the Bee at the third num- 
ber.” There follows an analysis of Budgell’s charges of persecution by 
the Stamp Office. See also in the London Magazine, IV, 383, verses “On 
the Death of the Bee,” giving a satirical account of its sickly life and 
the various expedients to keep it alive, including “Tindal’s golden drops,” 
a referring to its costume of “party colored clouts from Grubstreet 
stolen.” 


136 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


it was soon rudely dispelled. The growing animosity of 
“Grub writers” toward the compilers who “thieved” from 
their original contemporaries is reflected in an epigram® 
“occasioned by frequent puffing of Bees and Magazines,” 
which compares the regular journals to “passengers robbed, 
stripped, and murdered.”’ They also commented caustically 
on a puff of the Bee in the Daily Post-Boy:—‘“‘The Bee 
which was published Saturday last (if we are not much 
mistaken) carries a sting in his mouth and his tail too.’ I 
believe WE, the compilers of the Bee are much mistaken, 
since a sting and a puff seldom issue from the same mouth, 
whatever they may do from the same tail.’’® 

Then, in October, 1733, the Journal threw itself with all 
its vigor into the quarrel over the will of Dr. Matthew 
Tindall, the deist. Dr. Tindall, dying at an advanced age, was 
found to have made Budgell his heir in place of his nearest 
of kin, his nephew, Nicholas Tindall.** This fact led to an 
acrimonious public dispute, in the course of which appeared 
a pamphlet against Budgell, A copy of the will of Dr. Mat- 
thew Tindall with an account of what passed concerning the 


See 186. 

* See 189. 

“In number 73, the Journal had noted that the author of Christianity 
as Old as the Creation (one of Tindall’s latest works) was dying of 
consumption and taking the last desperate remedies—“country air and 
asses milk,” and had commented (item by Russel, ascribed to “M’), “I 
fear this prescription will have little success, it being a change only of 
air, and not of diet.” 

Nicholas Tindall seems to have been best known before this episode 
as translator of de Rapin’s History of England. Nichols, VIII, 267, 
notes a public letter by William Duncombe (1728), criticising Tindall’s 
style, “which is certainly none of the best.’ The Journal (138) adver- 
tised a new edition of the work (1732), and from April to December, 
1736, it was the subject of an almost continuous controversy, which ran 
off into an independent discussion of Scottish antiquities. It is also the 
subject of remarks in the preface to the Memoirs. “Monsieur Rapin, so 

_often extolled both by the Craftsman and the London Journalist [sic] 
as a fine historian, is very concisely characterized by the late Free Briton 
as the dullest of dull writers. And truly if a multitude of mistakes and 
blunders be any indication of dullness, this character cannot be charged 
with injustice.” The writer (Russel) goes on to say that it had been 
made clear in the Journal that in fifty pages there were sixty errors, 
chiefly in the translation of Latin sources. In proportion, he says the 
whole work would contain two thousand; hence Rapin’s prodigious 
popularity was mere Bibliomany, and he a Grubstreet author. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 137 


same between Mrs. Lucy Price [Tindall’s housekeeper], 
Eustace Budgell, Esq. and Mr. Nicholas Tindall. The cir- 
cumstantial account of Tindall’s death contained in this 
pamphlet was very damaging to Budgell. On the whole it 
makes a strong case for a fraudulent will, and Budgell’s 
answer, A vindication of Eustace Budgell, Esq. from some 
aspersions thrown upon him in a late pamphlet, is a weak 
and vague defense against it.6° The Grub-street Journal was 
interested in the affair on both Tindall’s and Budgell’s ac- 
counts. Tindall, as one of the leading deists, was anathema 
to the highly orthodox Russel and had, in company with his 
confreres, Woolston, Collins, and others, been frequently 
held up to derision in the Journal.*® Hence the scandal over 
his death and will was seized upon and exploited to the full. 
Budgell too, being a notorious figure and having incurred 
hatred as a thieving magaziner, was doubtless regarded as 
excellent prey when he got into a tight corner trying to play 
the role of Tindall’s heir. 

The Journal’s first shot was a leading article (number 
199) 
The death of the late great Dr. Tindall (as the great Mr. Budgell 
styles him about ten times in one letter) gave occasion to the publi- 
cation of the last will and testament of that famous Christian free- 
thinker . . . and of Memoirs of his life, etc., by the great Mr. Curll, 
who, by a prescription of a great many years justly claims it as his 
great privilege to publish the lives of all great men together with 
copies of their last wills and testaments. Notwithstanding which 
long prescription the great Mr. Budgell, though by profession a 
great lawyer, took great offence at the publication both of the last 


will and the memoirs, upon which has ensued a very great quarrel 
between these two great men. 


Following this comes a derisive comment on Curll’s materials 
and his style, which the writer, “Giles Blunderbuss,” main- 


® According to Nichols, V, 161, the author of this pamphlet was Wil- 
liam Webster, the “Richard Hooker” of the Weekly Miscellany. The 
author of the other pamphlet was N. Tindall, himself. Nichols, V, 516. 

® See post, Chapter vi, p. 234. One amusing instance of ridicule of 
Tindall occurs in 68, where in a summarized attack on Collins and Tindall, 
the latter is spoken of as “Richard” with the footnote that his Christian 
name was Matthew, but having renounced his Christian name, he might 
as well be called Richard. 


138 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


tains is modeled on Tindall’s own. In the next issue a wood- 
cut of a scene at a hair-dresser’s, The Art of Trimming, is 
interpreted by Bavius to represent various objects of the 
Journal's satire. One group, he declares, consists of the per- 
sons involved in the Tindall scandal—Mrs. Price, who wrote 
the will, Mr. Curll, N. Tindall, the doctor’s nephew, and 
Budgell. The latter is shown with passages from his pamph- 
let in his mouth, trying to compensate the nephew for the loss 
of his inheritance. A month later®* the Journal began a sys- 
tematic analysis of the facts in the case, pretending im- 
partiality and purporting to represent both sides, but probing 
mercilessly the damaging weaknesses and vague evasions of 
Budgell’s defense. In the next issue came Pope’s brilliant 
epigram, which drove Budgell into a distracted rage— 

Great Tindal’s gone, the Lord knows how or whither: 

To heaven we hope. ’Tis said Budge sends him thither 

To vend his wit. How so?—The Bee by this 

Will prove the Doctor’s apotheosis. 

Thus canonised by Budge, sure all men must 

Confess, he died like Socrates the just. 

Fair Lucia®’ this attests—she saw him rise 

By G—d, by Bees transported to the skies. 

The fact, the phiz, the name in gold shall shine: 

Th’ Athenians thus stamped Socrates divine. 


The oath and emblem’s just: Rome’s senate thus 
Made Gods of Caesar and of Romulus. 


In his fury at these lines Budgell gave vent in the Bee to 
a confused and long-winded denunciation of the Journal for 
accusing him of murder. In reply the Journal (number 207) 
explained away the charge with great gusto: ‘“The compilers, 
or rather chief compiler, in the worst sense of that word, of 
a weekly pamphlet (consisting of servile piratical transcripts 
from the works of others . . .) having charged our 205th 
. Journal with an abominable falsehood, it was thought proper 
to represent this matter to the world in the fairest manner.” 
There follows a crushing set of ironical resolutions passed 
by “the Society,” after the laughter at “reading this tragi- 


Tn number 204. 
*§ Mrs. Lucy Price, the housekeeper. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 132 


comical accusation of us” had ceased, in which is presented 
a most colorless and innocent interpretation of the lines.®® 
Budgell is, moreover, accused of writing his own defense in 
the Bee; his brain, it is affirmed, is turned by his “great 
learning,’ and he wrote his long vindication of himself 
merely to demonstrate his own great talents and swell the 
Bee with ten original pages on nothing. This led to more 
recriminations in the Bee. Budgell complained of assault 
“without the least provocation in a most scandalous and 
barbarous manner” and resorted to personalities about Rus- 
sel. To these the Journal (number 209) replied with sar- 
casms on the Bee’s descent to personalities, and its general 
contempt for the clergy as unpatriotic, grasping, and dis- 
honest. It also sneered, ‘If the late Dr. Tindall had left his 
works and all his money to a priest, I should indeed have 
taken it for granted that his will must have been forged, 
or that he was out of his senses.” 

The Journal was not content, however, with insinuating 
that Budgell had done away with Tindall. As soon as his 
fury had had time to subside, they ingeniously suggested 
that he was possibly Tindall’s natural son. He had foolishly 
inserted in the Bee (number 37) a poem in praise of adop- 
tion, where he proclaimed 

An ass may be an heir by Nature’s rule 
And the philosopher transmit the fool. . . 


On reason’s basis Budgell forms his claim 
And Tindall still survives, but in his name. 


The Journal (number 214) pounced on these lines with 
some of its own— 


—Since Nature’s laws, as old as the creation,?° 
Work stronger than revealed—in propagation; 
In Budgell’s name how Tindall may survive 
My Muse will humbly her conjecture give. 


© For instance, that the allusion to Socrates was merely suggested by 
the Bee’s own phrase, “Socrates did not meet death with more courage 
and presence of mind,” and that the thus at the end referred only to “a 
similitude between the titles conferred upon Caesar and Romulus after 
their death and those pompous eulogiums on the Doctor, so often re- 
peated in the Bees.” 

An ironical use of a deistic phrase. 


140 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Some act perhaps that god-like man had done 
‘Might make this more than his adopted son. 
Philosopher and fool thus, two in name 
Reason’s and Nature’s heir may shine the same. 


Such sneers and innuendoes drew from the furious Bud- 
gell further vehement defences of himself and equally vehe- 
ment attacks on Russel and also Pope, who, it was intimated, 
was the real cause of his “scandalous and barbarous treat- 
ment.” In his desire to tear off his opponents’ mask and 
reveal their malice, he wrote for the Bee™ “A Letter from 
the authors of the Bee to Russel, a clergyman living in 
Smith’s Square, near the Horse-Ferry, in Westminster, and 
the reputed author of the Grubstreet Journal.” He asserts, 
We are informed that you are a parson, that you have but a mean 
fortune and no preferment; that you rent a house in Smith’s Square, 
near the Horse-Ferry in Westminster ;72 that not one of all your 
neighbors either visits you or esteems you, and that the only visible 


way you have of getting a livelihood is by taking some young gentle- 
men to board in your house, who go to Westminster School. 


He demonstrates his own righteousness by the fact that he, 
though he is the only writer for the Bee whom the Journal 

r “its poet’? [Pope] ever attacked, has declined to print 
several satires on both the paper itself and the poet. Nor 
does he disdain to puff his own abilities as satirist and poet. 
The same number of the Bee likewise contained “A second 
letter from the authors of the Bee to Parson Russel,” in 
which was included ‘“‘An Essay upon Envy.” In his next 
issues Budgell carried on the war by printing several letters 
chosen from the great number received sympathizing with 
him for his treatment by the Journal. One writer points out 
that the Journal has even attacked the memory of “the great 
Mr. Addison,” and has never yet “commended and spoke well 
_of any one man but of Pope the poet, for which there can 

See the Bee, IV, 72. 

% Information which drew from Russel an epigram (209) to the effect 
that where logical argument with the J ournal was impossible, an opponent 
might well resort to such personalities as “reverend master; or parson, 


or priest,’ cry out “Wounds, Blood and Murder,” and tell “a story of 
poison, Smiths Square and Horse Ferry.” 


QUARERBES WITH PERIODICALS 141 


be but one reason.” Another believes that the writer of the 
epigram “Great Tindall’s gone’ must be a monster in his 
soul and hopes that when discovered he will be found to be 
a monster in his body also—obviously an insinuation of 
Pope’s authorship. In reply to a correspondent who offers to 
send in anecdotes about ‘“‘the Parson and his Poet,” the Bee 
says that though well posted about them already it will accept 
the offer. The Journal’s statement that it had by no means 
accused Budgell of murder was also reprinted together with 
a minute analysis of the epigram to show that such was 
nevertheless its intention. Notice was then served that the 
discussion was concluded, but that the Journal might pos- 
sibly expect public revelation of the lives of its writers. 
The Journal, for its part, had no intention of closing the 
matter. On the contrary, it entered into a long serial history 
of Tindall’s last days and the writing of his will. The will 
itself was printed with an ironical defence of Budgell’s ex- 
planations of it. It was noted that the amount of the estate 
was far less than the bequests, with the comment, ““There 
was some secret mystery in this affair, without any priest- 
craft.’”’™? Suspicious points such as the matter of a bond which 
Budgell had given Tindall, and the unusual spelling Tindal 
in the will, were also emphasized. The gist of the implied 
charge against Budgell was that he had managed to insinuate 
himself so far into the Doctor’s favor by agreeing with and 
supporting his doctrines that Tindall had lent him large sums 
of money and had made him his close confidant and adviser, 
to the exclusion of his nephew and natural heir, Nicholas 
Tindall. It was suspected, moreover, that he had abused his 
intimacy and taken advantage of Tindall’s weakness of mind 
at the last to forge a new will by which he became the heir. 
The Doctor’s housekeeper, Mrs. Lucy Price, the “fair Lucia” 
of Pope’s epigram, was implicated as Budgell’s accomplice. 
The articles which set forth the detailed evidence for these 
suspicions, and which of course have a distinct bias against 
Budgell, form the body of the attack, but are relieved and 


® Another ironical use of deistic phraseology. See 206. 


142 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


garnished with numerous short squibs and personal epigrams. 
Thus Budgell was stung into a renewal of his personalities 
against Pope and Russel, and in consequence came retorts 
in the Journal about Budgell’s egregious vanity, his doubtful 
sanity, and the dullness and piratical methods of the Bee. 
As a result the quarrel had become, even before it reached its 
height in the interference of the Prompter, the most virulent 
in the Journal’s history. The personal allusions in the Journal 
range all the way from the comparatively innocent stanza 
in a poem advising an old maid searching for a husband to 
pretend to wealth (number 212)— 

Then may you see more happy days 

In being B—s wife. 


When dead, his Bee shall buzz thy praise 
And C—II shall print thy Life. 


to the devastating epigrams hinting that Budgell had mur- 
dered Tindall, and was his natural son, and Maevius’™ 
savage “Short, but good advice to E. B., Esq.” (number 
220)— 

Answer to facts alleged, nor think to mask all 

Calling thy brother grubs, knave, villain, rascal. 

What if these names seem just ?—yet if the stain 

Of testamental ink uncleansed remain 

Of thee the wicked world as wrong may judge 

And add those titles to the great Squire Budge. 


Tindall also was made the butt of epigrams. He is said to 
have destroyed the Testaments after they had stood for 
hundreds of years, and, the world having learned from him, 
his own testament stood but seventeen days. And when 
Budgell, with many trumpetings of his own and the Doctor’s 
greatness, offered medals as prizes for poems on Tindall, the 
Journal professed interest in the symbolical representation 
of the Doctor on them (also in number 220)— 

Ha! what strange figure’s this, thus oddly clad? 

The whore of Babylon, mounted on her pad, 

The seven headed beast in Revelations, 


Of harlots mother and abominations ? 
No, ’tis the beast, but not the scarlet whore, 


* Probably Russel. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 143 


A doctor standing where she rode before. 

A doctor !—How! I swear it is like no man 

*Tis rather some old visionary woman. 

Nothing but smock and gown has this old hag on; 
Who muttering seems enchantments o’er the dragon. 
*Tis Dr. Tindall, learned, godlike, great, 

Has driven his once loved mistress from her seat 
Where light revealed outfacing with his own 

Pope Mat now shines superior to Pope Joan. 


On the award of prizes in this contest, the Journal (numbers 
225, 226) reported the results and discussed the poems, since 
it seemed that the authors were “latent members of our 
society.’ The first prize poem received especial attention for 
its bad Latin. 

Budgell’s replies to this persecution were directed almost 
altogether against Pope. He burst forth in another “Letter 
from the authors of the Bee to Parson Russel, living over 
against St. Anne’s Church near the Horse Ferry in West- 
minster,” wherein Russel is told that he is odious to man- 
kind, but must nevertheless have been persuaded to this pres- 
ent malicious course by “the Poet, your helpmate.” “The 
raging envy of this poor creature toward every man whose 
writings have made him eminent is now become so obvious 
and notorious to all the world that he is better known by 
this part of his character than by his works.” There are 
further comments on “the villain your Poet,” “the little 
envious animal,” “the Parson’s black petticoats” and “the 
pygmy size of his Poet,” and other similar matter intended 
to cast down opponents and assuage the wounds of Budgell’s 
inordinate pride.*® These outbursts in the Bee make it clear 
that even now Pope was regarded, by Budgell at least, as 
the main force behind the Journal, and that Russel was con- 
sidered merely a willing and malicious tool in the hand of a 
malicious master. Budgell’s critical attitude toward Pope is 
clearly reflected in his remarks on the Epistle to Dr. Arbuth- 
not and The Characters of Women (Bee, number 103): 

%® See the Bee, numbers 52-61. In 61, in commenting on an advertise- 
ment in the Journal nominating Budgell for Parliament, the Bee declares 
it a malicious banter of Pope’s, and says that the poet had probably 


heard that a great man had promised Budgell a place in Parliament but 
had broken his word. 


144 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


We cannot help saying that as Mr. Pope is at present in his declin- 
ing years, we think that spirit which formerly appeared in some of 
his pieces is almost extinguished: In the two pieces last mentioned, 
tho there are some good lines there are others extremely low and 
obscure. His very rhimes are not always what the French call rich, 
and his versification has not that harmony which it formerly had. 
We may possibly give some instances in a future Bee to prove 
what we assert. 


The final installment of the Journal’s account of Tindall’s 
will was published in number 231 (May 30, 1734), and 
marks the end of the first phase of the quarrel, extending 
over a period of eight months. Except for an occasional prick, 
Budgell was now allowed to rest in peace for something over 
a year. Slight allusions to him and the controversy appeared 
occasionally ; for instance, in a proposal for rebuilding Grub- 
street in number 289, it is suggested that the dome of the 
capitol be shaped like a beehive and assigned to Budgell, 
“tho the place will be but small, ’tis not unlikely by the time 
it is built, ’twill be big enough to hold himself and all that will 
be left of the Doctor’s money.”*® The Journal showed no 
intention, however, of renewing the quarrel until it reprinted 
in number 294 a deistic composition by Tindall, ‘“The Phil- 
osopher’s Prayer,” as “uttered by the Dying Bee,” and then, 
“in order to give it some other recommendation, . . 
thought proper to tag it with rime.”*? A fortnight later came 
a second provocation, in the form of an attack on infidels, 
especially Tindall, running off into side thrusts at Budgell 
and the Bee. The question is asked why, since the witlings 
of the Bee show such respect for Addison, they do not refute 
his Christian writings. There are also contemptuous remarks 
on Budgell’s puffs of himself, on ‘The Philosopher’s 
Prayer,” and the bad Latin in one of the odes on Tindall. 
In number 298 came further criticism of the “Prayer,” and 
in number 300 a letter and verses “On the Deists’ Scheme of 
Fitness,’ and notice of a long puff*® “by late authors of the 

For other allusions, see 232, 256, 275. 

7 See post, p. 234 ff. 


Tn the Post-Boy, September 16 and 18, 1735, and the Daily Journal, 
September 17. 


QUARKELS WITH PERIODICALS 145 


Bee” charging the Journal with false quotations from ‘The 
Philosopher’s Prayer.” Upon these the Journal retorted in 
its usual vein, and published “A Soliloquy of Pufferus 
Secundus”’ (that is, Budgell, Henley being Primus) making 
the point that since Budgell couldn’t answer the arguments 
against the “Prayer” he would make the most of a few 
insignificant misprints in the Journal’s version. In succeed- 
ing issues (302-313)*® the fire was maintained; the Journal 
reprinted various prize poems on Tindall and called attention 
to their bad Latin. One of them (in number 311) is de- 
clared to be a riddle, and the hope is expressed that since the 
Bee has given one medal for it, it will give another to anyone 
who can elucidate it. It also printed an accurate version of 
the ‘Prayer’ as well as a ridiculous one in verse, and anno- 
tated one of the Tindall odes with remarks on the scandal 
over the will. It was announced that Orator Henley, who 
had derided the “Prayer” on its first appearance, had praised 
it in a special oration, and even announced a second on it, but, 
being taken to task for inconsistency, had rambled off into 
a discussion of King William’s landing at Torbay and the 
benefits of the revolution. The final shot at Budgell and his 
prize poems came in number 313 in the lines— 

What is’t to me if Tindal flies 

Or proudly tramples o’er the skies? 

What tho’ it be (I hope ’tis so) 

His fellow breathes not here below. 

Yet still his scorn of gold was vain 

For he (as I now) wrote for gain. 

His country’s love, what was’t but gold? 

For that he faith and honour sold. 

Gold was his god. And (to be free) 

Give but, dear Budge, the prize to me, 


I Tindal’s steps will straight pursue 
And even write in praise of you. 


Tn 311, “Jack Nab” says roundly, “. . . the world grows cursed tired 
of your contest with the Bee writers; it must be sure for want of other 
matter that you take such pains with a defunct drone. . . . For my part, 


as I take in your paper and never read a Bee in my life, I look on 
myself as two pence out of pocket when instead of a cheerful enter- 
tainment I see the first page of your paper filled with the Philosopher’s 
Prayer.” 


146 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


The only later mention of Budgell came upon his death in 
May, 1737, by suicide, with a coroner’s verdict of lunacy 
(number 386). The newspapers reported that he had been 
very uneasy over a cause soon to come on at Westminster, 
upon which the Journal commented “This cause at West- 
minster Hall, we hear, related to the late Dr. Tindal’s will.” 

The point of Budgell’s guilt in connection with Tindall’s 
will seems never to have been satisfactorily cleared up. So 
much minutely circumstantial evidence was produced against 
him, and his own defense was in comparison so vague and 
unconvincing, that it is hard to believe that the will was a 
legitimate one. Budgell was nevertheless so unbalanced and 
so wildly erratic that the spectacle of his baiting by the Jour- 
nal is rather unpleasant. This scandalous quarrel, with the 
frenzy of excitement which it threw him into, must have 
been, as the newspaper reports suggest, a last straw to cause 
his suicide. 

Although the Bee expired in the summer of 17358°—the 
Journal printed obituary verses on July 3—the quarrel did 
not die with it, but was carried on even more heatedly by 
the Prompter, which came to the defense of ‘““The Philoso- 
pher’s Prayer” in the autumn. 

The semi-weekly Prompter, which was the organ of Aaron 
Hill and William Popple and was devoted especially to the 
theatre, had been on excellent terms with the Bee from the 
very beginning. Indeed, the Bee had paved the way for alli- 
ance by declaring of the Prompter’s first issue that it “seems 
to be much better wrote than the Universal Spectator, the 
Grubstreet Journal, and other papers which have of late at- 
tempted to divert the town’—an expression reflecting the 
change which controversy had made in the Bee’s originally 
complacent attitude toward the Journal. The Prompter had 
managed to run through nearly one hundred issues without 
falling foul of the Journal, except for one slight encounter 
on the subject of harlequinades, which had led to no especial 

© For some time after its death its editors still advertised it for sale, 


and inserted notices in the newspapers complaining of malicious treat- 
ment. See Grub-street Journal, 304. 


QOUARREES WITH PERTODICALS 147 


bitterness. In its ninety-eighth number, however, it sprang 
with surprising boldness and vigor to the side of the Bee, 
now practically defunct, in the squabble over ‘“The Philoso- 
pher’s Prayer.” Under the heading “Qui Bavium non odit, 
amet, tua . . . ” appeared a violent assault on the Journal. 
It opened promisingly, ‘“There is a meanness in some minds,” 
and continues with allusions to “a set of obscure writers” 
and “these reptiles,” who ‘“‘only censured the Prayer because 
it was wrote by the late Dr. Tindall and recommended by 
Mr. B—’”, a statement which contained more than a grain of 
truth. It also maintained that there was nothing in the 
“Prayer,” “but what not only a tradesman, or a gentlewoman, 
or a porter, or a cook maid, but even the whole bench of bish- 
ops and body of the clergy might with great devotion and 
on bended knees repeat.” 

In this same issue and those following during the next four 
months the Prompter carried on a campaign against the 
Grub-street Journal, which showed in the matter of personal 
abuse a good will and fluency which even Bavius himself 
must have envied. For a vocabulary of opprobrium, one may 
search the pages of the Journal in vain for a collection of 
words and phrases to exceed those of the Prompter.*’ The 
quarrel after a time turned, however, into a tiresome squab- 
ble over Latinity and theology, until it broke out on the 
Prompter’s side into shrieks of triumph over what it termed 
the defeat and forced resignation of Bavius. 

The opening attack was followed in the Prompter (num- 
bers 101 and 102) with a burlesque of the Journal’s methods 
with the “Prayer.’’ After a sarcastic allusion to “the very 
great talent” of “‘the little fry at the Pegasus,” it analyzed 
ironically in the Journal’s manner a prayer of Cleanthes, and 
announced, 

* Apropos of the Prompter’s fluency in abuse, appeared in 311 the 
complaint: “It is very remarkable that all those apostatizing members 
from our society, whose ignorance, immorality, or impiety in writing has 
been exposed in this Journal have made use of the very same double 


method in their own defence” (that is, discussion of petty detail and 
personal abuse of the Grub editors). 


148 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Whereas the author of the Daily Gazetteer has published a versifi- 
cation of the prayer of an ancient philosopher called Cleanthes, con- 
trary to the right and title which the learned Bavius has to versify 
all philosopher’s prayers whatsoever, this is to acquaint the public 
that the said Bavius is determined to prosecute the aforesaid pub- 
lisher according to the extremest rigor of the laws now in force, to 
secure the property of the subject. 


In numbers 105 and 107 the Prompter resorted to verse, both 
Latin and English, ‘In effigiem doctissimi Bavii, aedi suae in 
via Grubstreet dicta, loco Pegasi, praeponendam. 

Pollebam Juvenis, studio sine divite vena 

Cum Pater, incertus, clerum, faceretne, poetam, 


Mallebat clerum. Clerus—nolente Minerva 
Versiculos facio, atque hebdomadalia pango. 


and the following adaptation from Henry IV— 


In faith, dear Grub, you have been much to blame! 
You must needs learn, my Wag, to mend these faults; 
Defect of manners, want of government; 

Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain. 


The word clerus in the Latin epigram gave rise to endless 
disquisitions on Latinity as well as to the bandying back and 
forth of charges of disrespect and lack of reverence for the 
clergy. 

The Journal was indeed throughout the quarrel continually 
pressing the charges that the Prompter was deistic and hostile 
to the church and its clergy, while the Prompter on its side 
consistently denied, excused, and explained away such accu- 
sations. The Prompter, deistic in its sympathies, yet had no 
desire to appear as a detractor of the clergy, or an opponent 
of orthodox religion. Its explanation (number 108) of clerus 
was as follows: 

The word clerus is used by Pliny for ...a worm or grub that 
got into bee hives and infected the honey. Allusively to this kind of 
occupation in Pliny’s Grub the epigrammatist thought it might with 
great propriety and beauty be used as a name for such a little 
poisonous grub as the reverend drayman of the hebdomadalian dung- 
cart [ Russel, of course], and in this sense of the word could not 
be understood (but by Bavius himself whom I have charity enough 


to suppose mistaken in his application of the word) to mean the 
clergy in general. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 149 


This apology was enforced by a further onslaught on Russel, 
in number 112, for his unclerical activities, 

Of all the hot-headed and ignorant bigots this age has produced, 
none has distinguished himself in this wrong method [1. e. defending 
religion by pulling down reason] so much as the Reverend Drayman 
at the Pegasus; whose employment (to observe it en passant) in 
writing Grub-street Journals is just as becoming the function of 
priesthood as was his who employed his time in inventing gun- 
powder; the one being made use of to destroy the bodies, the other 
the characters of men. This mixture of priest and scavenger, this 
motley composite of sacred and profane . . . this artful hypocrite 
and cold designing traitor . . . the Vicar of Grub-street. 

In the Prompter, number 120, Pope too is branded as a 
libeller of the clergy in his translation of Horace, and accused 
of leading all the poetae minores who ape him, to follow in 
his footsteps. 

Other issues were also dragged into the dispute. ““T. B.”, 
who contributed several anti-Grubean letters to the Prompter, 
criticised Pope for defects in style in The Dunciad, tautology, 
for instance (number 108), and again (number 111) enlarges 
on his career as a libeller. More pertinent is the direct attack 
on the Journal’s manners and methods in controversy, to 
which, with two epigrams, the whole of number 107 is de- 
voted. Between personalities and Latinity, however, “The 
Philosopher’s Prayer,’ which was the original bone of con- 
tention was at times almost lost sight of. A pretense of dis- 
cussing it was maintained, nevertheless—the Prompter 
defending it as a high and noble utterance, and the Journal 
contending that it was epicurean and atheistical and denied 
the very being of God (number 320). Bavius on his side 
cited the doubts and reservations implied in Tindall’s numer- 
ous if clauses as constituting a denial of religious dogma 
(number 324), and examined the Prompter’s attributes as a 
philosopher and a Christian. These he declared contradictory ; 
for the Prompter, while seeming desirous of acceptance as a 
member of the Christian community, still denied all Chris- 
tian dogmas and preferred apparently to be called a philoso- 
pher rather than a Christian (number 326). This side of the 
argument, like the one over the Latin, at length lapsed into 


150 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


pedantry, and became a hairsplitting wrangle over points of 
religious dogma. 

The Journal stuck to the point at issue no closer than did 
its opponent. On both sides the chief desire was of course to 
discover a weak spot and score a hit. An exposure of im- 
proper motives was more important than the true meaning 
or value of “The Philosopher’s Prayer.” The Journal at the 
outset had recognized the entrance of the Prompter into the 
quarrel by accusing it, in ““A Dialogue between Prompterus 
and Pufferus Secundus,’’®? of taking up the cudgels against 
a well known opponent merely to attract attention: 

Prom. I’ve advertised and puffed this thing of mine 
In vain: tho got to number ninety-nine. 

Puff. Write ’gainst the Grubs; ’twill give it a new motion 
If you’ll defend my prayer’s profound devotion. 

Prom. ’Twould fill, to answer all their damned reflections 
Three Prompters. Puff. Snap at two or three objections 
This still has been my way. In puffs [’ll bully, 
And tell the world, that you have answered fully. 
Thus my last Bee, by puffing repetition, 
Is flying in another new edition. 

Prom. Another? That’s the third. Pray, how is’t reckoned ? 
It never heard of, much less saw, the second. 

Puff. N’importe. If ’tis a new edition, brother, 
Tho there’s no second, surely ’tis another. 


The Journal also selected as a vulnerable point of attack the 
practice of reprinting extracts from the Prompter in the 
Daily Journal, which was published by the same printer. 
This trick of the trade was duly emphasized in “An egregious 
puff in the Daily Journal paraphrastically illustrated” (num- 
ber 307) and an epigram voicing objection to buying the 
Prompter for twopence and then the Daily Journal for three 
halfpence only to find that 


these twins of different name, 
Prompter and Daily Journal are the same. 


The same point was made again in the epigram (number 
316)— 

A beggar blind, with legs and feet supplied 

A lame one riding on his back as guide. 


* Budgell again. See 304. 


QUARKELS WITH PERIODICALS 151 


Thus Daily Journal, stumbling in his track 
And puffing, bears the Prompter on his back. 


It was also suggested that the somewhat similar practice in 
the Bee of issuing “three editions” which were in reality only 
one was probably defended from the Bible—“The last shall 
be first,” etc., (in number 307). 

As to personalities, charges of impudence, ignorance, and 
so forth, the Journal was quite justified in replying with a 
tu quoque, and asking who in this matter had the “greater 
occasion for shame and confusion.’ As a fair specimen of 
its own powers in this way it offered in number 310 an 
epigram which hit off cleverly the various points in the 
quarrel, and recalled one embarrassing episode in Hill’s 
career—his futile promotion of a speculative scheme to 
manufacture beech-oil— 

In quiet let Tindal’s adopted inherit, 

Complain of great men and his own slighted merit. 
Let him rail, let him rail, be eternally railing 

At priests and the Christian religion’s prevailing. 
Let the Prompter, his second, too take up the cudgel 
And weakly and formally vindicate B—1. 


Tf the gospel e’er suffer from two such infectors 
The world must be crazy or Beech-oil Projectors. 


In the midst of the campaign, which apparently was to 
run on interminably with arguments over clerus and theo- 
logical quibbles, the Journal suffered a major casualty in the 
resignation of Bavius. This the Prompter jubilantly hailed 
as a signal for its victory, declaring, moreover, that the de- 
fection of Bavius had led to a dissension in the Grubstreet 
camp over the choice of a new commander. 

The baton, [the Prompter says (number 123)] by the spies I have 
among them, I am informed, will be conferred on another Reverend 
Militant, who having served a long time under that renowned com- 
mander, the experienced Bavius, has acquired as consummate a 
knowledge as his predecessor. It is yet a doubt whether he will carry 


it (tho the odds are very much for him), being opposed by the 
Honest Yorkshireman8? who has lately given some proofs of his 


* Doubtless Henry Carey, whose ballad opera, The Wonder! An Hon- 
est Yorkshireman, was acted at Drury Lane, 1735. See Biographia 
Dramatica. 


152 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


capacity in the Grubean way, and made two or three attacks that 
have been very much applauded by the learned society. But unless 
Bavius resumes the baton in order to prevent a division, it is most 
probable the election will fall on the Reverend Doctor, celebrated 
for his performances in the last Prompter but two, and better known 
by the name of the Man of Taste,84 than his own. 

Bavius refusing to retire at once from public disputes, the 
Prompter issued (number 127) the announcement that 
“Whereas the ghost of the deceased Reverend Captain Bavius 
continues to walk and haunt the old place of his abode, these 
are to acquaint such whom his reappearance may be disagree- 
able to, that care will be taken to lay him, after he has walked 
to the end of the Philosopher’s Prayer.”’® But in number 
128 appears an obituary notice— 


The Reverend Captain, deceased, having already finished his short 
course, and lain himself, now sleeps with his fathers. His behaviour 
in dying showed even death could not cure his itch of nibbling, as 
long as he had a tooth in his head. But, as he lived, he died. 


Thus by the chimney fire a monkey lay 
And in death’s agonies remembering play 
Crawled o’er to puss, who slept on t’other side 
And having bit his tail, came back and died. 
Even now Bavius refused to rest in peace, and number 133, 
with the heading “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit’ is devoted 
entirely to reiterations of the charges against him, in the 
course of which it is said that the Gentleman’s Magazine for 
January has two Russello-Grubean articles by Bavius. This 
seems to be the final echo of the battle over the Philosopher’s 
Prayer, except for the criticism of a correspondent who has 
noted in the Prompter’s manner “now and then a little oozing 
from the Grubstreet common sewer, to the great annoyance 
of all lovers of cleanliness” (in the Prompter, number 137). 
With the passing of Bavius and the accession of a new 
editor, probably James Miller, the Journal came still more 
bitterly into conflict with the Prompter over a new bone of 
contention, which soon distracted interest from “The Philos- 
* James Miller, author of the comedy, The Man of Taste (see p. 198). 
The Prompter thus took a leaf from Bavius’ own book; it was in 


such phrases that the Journal had made sport of James Moore-Smythe. 
The trick was of course not an original one, witness Swift. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 153 


opher’s Prayer.” Miller and William Popple of the Prompter 
were the authors of two new rival comedies, The Man of 
Taste and The Double Deceit, which now became the subject 
of a violent altercation.°® Each made the most of his position 
as an editor to cry up his own play and damn his opponent’s. 

Charges of plagiarism, the organization of cabals, and so 
forth, were bandied back and forth, and the new quarrel was 
soon going as vigorously and merrily as had the one before 
it. In its turn it too became an exchange of personalities, this 
time between Popple and Huggonson, the printer of the 
Journal. During this controversy the Journal also made a 
slight side excursion against Aaron Hill’s theories regarding 
amateur acting, but as little came of it, the latent attempt to 
start another line of disagreement was soon abandoned. It is 
quite probable that readers of the Journal found these squab- 
bles, and particularly the one over the “Prayer,’’ extremely 
boring. Such is the impression to be gathered from a letter 
in number 325 asking the Journal “to give over pestering 
your readers with disputes about a damned play and a damned 
prayer.” The Journal, however, retorted virtuously that it did 
not consider it out of the way to give a little space now and 
then to a defence of natural and revealed religion “against 
the wicked insinuations contained in that prayer and against 
the weak and wicked arguments published . . . in vindica- 
tion of it.”” Moreover, this letter, it is suggested, comes with 
a bad grace from one who, the editor thinks, is himself a 
contributor, and whose work they have even gone so far as to 
publish as their own! As far as the “Prayer” was concerned, 
little more was said about it; the “damned play’’, however, 
still flourished as a topic of discussion. 

One of the most interesting phases of this varied contro- 
versy between the Journal and the Prompter was the question 
of Aaron Hill’s participation in it. Hill was certainly hostile 
to neither side before the quarrel. He had been a contributor 
to the Journal and was on good terms with the Bee.** Never- 

* For a detailed account of this quarrel and criticism of Hill’s theory 
of acting see post, Chapter v. 


* See Dorothy Brewster, Aaron Hill. Carruthers in his life of Pope 
summarizes this quarrel, 282 ff. He says (287) that a long prose obituary 


154 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


theless, the Prompter was his; Popple’s influence in it must 
have been secondary. That the Journal held Hill responsible 
is clearly evident from its sarcastic allusion to Beech-Oil 
Projectors, its turning of the attack on his theories of acting, 
and the more or less veiled personalities directed against him 
continually in the discussions of the Philosopher’s Prayer 
and the two rival plays. Hill’s attitude toward these personal 


allusions is manifest in a somewhat surprising letter to Rich- 
ardson, March 6, 1735.88 


I have observed from many angry and indeed unjust personalities 
in the Grubstreet Journal pointing grossly at me that I am mis- 
represented by the author or authors, as the defender of the Philo- 
sopher’s Prayer and disliker of the Man of Taste; not to mention 
other mistakes which they seem often to be led into about me. 

As you know that I have nothing to answer for on either of these 
two heads, having never seen any of those papers till I read them in 
the published Prompters, I should take it as a favor if you will 
immediately find means to undeceive the gentlemen concerned. I 
am ashamed to give you this trouble, but am altogether unacquainted 
with any of them myself: nor do I know who is their publisher. 

It is very disagreeable to me to find myself ill-treated upon such 
mistaken grounds of resentment; and it would be more so to be 
forced into a necessity of defending myself publicly. I have always 
been an enemy to these personal bickerings among writers, and wish 
well to them all with a sincerity, that (of how little service soever 
it may be) does not at least deserve to be treated unkindly. 

I shall be very much obliged to you if you can find some way 
to let this be known to the gentlemen, whoever they are, that they 
may no longer misconceive, Sir, your most obedient, humble ser- 
vant, A. Hill. 


It is rather difficult to accept literally all of Hill’s state- 
ments here. He was the chief editor of the Prompter, yet he 
disclaims all responsibility for large sections of material and 
even asserts that he had never seen them until he read them 
in print. Neither could the statement that he knew nothing 
of any of the Journal’s editors, or even the name of the pub- 

ot a Mrs. Butler of Sussex which appeared in the Journal, November 

28, 1734, was by Pope. Hill inserted in the Prompter of December 8 
laudatory verses to the author of the obituary, who, he believed, was 
Pope. These lines, Carruthers says, were later ascribed to Pope himself. 
Cf. Griffith, Pope: Bibliography, p. 262. 


In the Foster Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This 
letter is quoted in part in Dorothy Brewster’s Aaron Hill. 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 155 


lisher, be quite ingenuous. The Prompter and the Bee had 
both for some time been naming and describing Russel as 
definitely as possible as the editor, and the name of the pub- 
lisher, to whom communications might be sent was, as in all 
papers, clearly printed at the end of each issue. The most 
probable assumption is perhaps that Popple was the chief 
mover in the quarrel, and that Hill preferred to have him 
carry the weight of the abuse. The whole letter sounds as 
though it were a formal diplomatic note to the editors of the 
Journal, which Hill wished Richardson to convey to them 
in order to avoid the trouble or possible discomfort of deal- 
ing with them himself. That he was as innocent and ignorant 
of these long continued personalities as he claimed to be it 
is difficult to believe. He would seem to be doing much as 
Pope did with the Journal itself, disclaiming responsibility 
when he found it irksome. That the note accomplished its 
purpose is clear from a statement in number 325 (March 18, 


i735) 


We have been likewise assured than an ingenious gentleman, formerly 
our correspondent, and at present generally thought to be one of the 
chief authors of the Prompter has declared that he never wrote 
anything concerning the Philosopher’s Prayer or the Man of Taste, 
that he never saw any of the papers on those subjects till after they 
were printed, and that he entirely disapproved all the personal scur- 
rilities in them levelled at the supposed authors of some pieces in our 
Journals. 


This was indeed making the most of Hill’s statement and 
stretching it to cover all possible ground. It is noticeable, 
too, that there is no hint of conciliation in the Journal’s 
notice, but rather satisfaction in receiving apologies and ex- 
planations from an opponent who was admittedly in the 
wrong. The impression is confirmed by an editorial note in 
the Journal six months later. In number 352 was published 
“Of the praise of tobacco, or the smoker’s epitome. Mr. A. 
H ’s style imitated,” with a note “See his Actors Epi- 
tome and the Dedication to Zara.’”’ The forty lines of this 
poem were full of phrases apparently in burlesque of Hill’s 
style, especially in his advice to actors. They also had a 





156 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


postscript wherein the Journal was charged with having “‘in- 
judiciously attributed to Mr. P what in reality con- 
cerned Mr. H and sic vice versa.” The Journal declared 
two weeks later: 








This charge is entirely groundless, for most of his allegations are 
brought against the paper called the Prompter, considered in a per- 
sonal capacity, to which as a person are justly reputed indiscrimi- 
nately the mistakes and ill conduct of the two authors, who are both 
answerable for everything which appeared in that paper, not under 
the character of any correspondent, but in that of the Prompter. 
And as to some things which are particularly attributed to one of 
those authors, none of them in reality at all concerned the other. 


The Journal was not one to forget and forgive, nor are 
there many instances of its eagerness to grasp an outstretched 
hand. Another interesting side-light is thrown on the quarrel 
by a letter from Budgell to the editor of the Prompter dated 
February 8, 1735-6.89 Budgell here complains that the 
Prompter had acknowledged his letters very tardily, and had 
also criticised them for being fragmentary and incomplete.*° 
He goes on, 


A gentleman much my superior both in parts and learning [an un- 
usual admission for Budgell] . . . sent you a letter long since with 
the Universal Spectator enclosed in it. This gentleman (as I thought 
at least) showed in a very masterly manner how flagrantly the Spec- 
tator and the Grubstreet Journal, though they both condemned the 
Philosopher’s Prayer, had contradicted one another. He showed how 
much the layman excelled the Parson [Russel] both in candor and 
good breeding, and I own I cannot still help thinking that nothing 
could more mortify the Grubstreet Drayman than your publishing 
my friend’s letter. . . . I presume [ need not tell you how much 
Bavius triumphs on your silence, nor how many adversaries your 
espousing the Philosopher’s Prayer had drawn upon you besides the 
Drayman. . . . I should think that nothing would more contribute 
to make your paper taken notice of than so many little curs barking 
at you, if with a few lashes of your whip you sent them yelping 
home to tell their story and make their complaints to their brothers. 


SBA SBS 


5° See British Museum, MSS 37232, f. 137. 

° Prompter, January 27, 1736, “The letters signed A. B. are both, tho 
late, come to hand. If the author will extend himself in some of the 
subjects he recommends he will find due regard will be paid to them. 
Hitherto they have been, more properly speaking, hints, without execu- 
tion,” 


QUARRELS WITH PERIODICALS 157 


Appended to this letter is the illuminating note—‘‘Sir—You 
have all the letters that came to my hand. Surely this should 
be signed E. B., who knows no end of his Philosopher’s 
Prayer. S. R. [Samuel Richardson].” Evidently Budgell 
became wearisome even to his friends and allies. 

The Journal was able to enjoy the last word in these 
quarrels and to crow over its adversaries, for it survived 
them both. The Bee seems to have died a lingering death; in 
the Journal’s following number, 300, there are frequent 
allusions to the fact that the Bee had ceased its buzzings, 
except for issuing what it called new editions of its last num- 
ber. The Prompter, which survived the Bee by about a year, 
was upon its demise the subject of an exultant editorial of 
more than four columns (number 350), in which a sarcastic 
résumé of the whole quarrel is preceded by the announce- 
ment, “On Friday the second of July last died the Prompter, 
an apostatizing member of our Society, who taking no warn- 
ing by the fate of the Weekly Register, Bee, etc. imitated 
their conduct by showing a particular enmity to our Journal.” 


CHAPTER IN 
LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 


The professed purpose of the Grub-street Journal was a 
literary one. According to announcements at the beginning, 
to reiterations of policy from time to time in the heat of 
various controversies, and to Bavius’ history in the preface 
to The Memoirs of Grub-street, the Journal was intended 
first of all to serve the cause of literature. It was to reveal the 
unnoticed or hidden excellences of good books on the one 
hand, and on the other the stupidity or imposture of bad 
ones. Although it dealt during its course in nearly all sorts 
of wares, it did in reality keep literature, taken in a broad 
sense, its leading interest. It might betray an occasional 
warmth against the excise, undertake a crusade against a 
quack doctor, wrangle over a point of theology, or fill its 
columns with Addisonian moral essays, but it did cling with 
more or less fidelity to its avowed purpose as a champion 
of literature. In pretense at least it regarded itself as a de- 
fender of literary ideals in its quarrels with Bentley and 
Theobald and in its assaults on the newspapers and maga- 
zines, which it accused of demoralizing contemporary peri- 
odical literature. 

Of course the spirit of the Grub-street Journal was essen- 
tially combative and pugnacious. It soon became evident that 
while it might talk generalities about putting down the im- 
pudent or uplifting obscure geniuses and reviving forgotten 
classics, what it really existed for was to ferret out weak- 
nesses, detect errors, and expose false motives. Moreover, 
one can never shake off the impression that the Journal is 
neither ingenuous nor disinterested. It was apparently de- 
lighted rather than disappointed when it found something 
to attack. In addition there is always the underlying possi- 
bility of personal complications. This is obvious, of course, 
in the case of the Dunces. Theobald, for instance, was 


[ 158 ] 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 159 


pilloried chiefly because he was objectionable to Pope, and 
the various books which suffered in the Journal’s columns 
were often clearly the objects of personal rivalries, between 
either authors or booksellers. Of plays this was even truer. 
The difficulties of getting a play produced, the prevalence 
of claques and cabals in the theaters, the jealousies of actors, 
all combined to interfere with genuine criticism. The criti- 
cism of a play became almost at once a series of angry 
shrieks and recriminations between rival authors and their 
friends. The result is often amusing and lively reading, but 
it is interesting far less as indicating the critical point of 
view of the period, than as illustrating and exposing its 
literary manners and practical methods—it is quarrelsome 
and personal.? 

The Journal carried on numerous sustained quarrels ex- 
tending over a period of months, quarrels like those over 
Bentley’s Milton, which stand out distinctly in the paper’s 
career. Apart from these, however, it kept up a steady fire 
on less important productions, noticed perhaps in only one 
or two numbers. 

Of real literary criticism, the discussion of the principles 
of literary art, or aesthetic and artistic analysis of individual 
works, there is in fact very little to be found in the Journal. 
Occasionally, to be sure, one comes upon a detached bit of 
comment which in its point of view is disinterestedly critical. 
For instance in number 54, “Thomas Didymus” summarizes 
the battle between Aeneas and Turnus in the Aeneid, Book 


* This has of course been continually illustrated in the preceding chap- 
ters, but another typical instance at this point may not be superfluous. 
In a series of letters concerning a verse satire, The Dramatic Sessions, 
in 241, 242, and 243, the poem was savagely attacked by “The Laesos”, 
and its author, “Scriblerus Theatricus”, tried to evade responsibility by 
declaring that the poem, having been refused by the Grub-street Journal, 
had been brought out by a bookseller, much to the author’s surprise and 
with many unauthorized changes. This merely brought down a second 
savage attack by ‘‘The Laesos’”’, who said he had not originally mentioned 
all the faults of the piece since he considered his job as difficult as 
cleaning the Augean stables. The whole plan of the poem, he says, 
shows a “blundering genius,’’ and he expresses his contempt for the cow- 
ardice of an abusive writer who, when taken to task, avoids blame by 
fathering his own abuse on some unknown person who is declared to 
have made changes in the text. 


160 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


V, to show that it reflects little credit on Aeneas, and has a 
decidedly anticlimactic effect, coming, as it does, at the end 
of the main action. Or again, in number 386, one “R. S.” 
appears in defense of Tasso’s pastoral play Aminta, which 
had been adversely criticised in the Guardian (28) as being 
unpastoral in language, sentiment, and so forth. R. S. objects 
to the point of view of the critic who had disparaged Tasso 
and had also praised highly an English pastoral in the 
broadest Somerset dialect. He points out inaccuracies in the 
Guardian articles and is sustained in his charges by the 
Grubstreet editor. It is perhaps indicative of the contempo- 
rary taste that R. S. should object to the use of such names 
as ‘“Rager” and Cicely in the dialect of the English pastoral. 
Of philological interest there is also a trace, as in a letter 
(suggested by the Spectator, number 135) proposing an 
academy for the standardization of English, with the Journal 
as temporary guardian of the purity of the language. To 
illustrate the proper work of such an authority the writer 
brings up the case of never so much, which though very old 
and practically universal, ought to be “sifted out” of the 
language and replaced by ever so much. Another and more 
interesting suggestion appears in number 213, in a petition 
of “H” for recognition as a letter. The author contends that 
such recognition has been denied chiefly because of the lack 
of an H in the Greek alphabet, the symbol H merely repre- 
senting Eta. He remarks upon the fact that H as a letter 
had existed in the older Greek in such forms as HO and in- 
veighs against the use of an before words with an aspirated 
initial h or an initial u like that in universe. “All the world 
says, and therefore should write, a union, a unity.” Clearly 
the writer was a man in advance of his age; the reforms he 
sought are hardly complete two centuries later. Again, 
Martyn (‘B’’) in number 26 collates an obscure passage in 
Urry’s Chaucer with Caxton’s edition, and notes that the 
earlier reading is perfectly clear. But such stray scraps of 
criticism are few and far between, and are almost lost sight 
of in the great bulk of the literary and dramatic discussion, 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 161 


which, practically all of it, impresses itself on the reader as 
being personal in its motivation. But doubtless Vergil’s tech- 
nical skill in narrative, Tasso’s style, or the propriety of 
never so much or an universe, seemed altogether too tame 
to serve as anything more than convenient filler. 

There is only one notable exception to this general con- 
clusion. During the Journal’s early period there appeared in 
it a series of four articles on Hudibras signed “M. J.”’ (num- 
bers 39, 41, 45, 63). The purpose of the writer is to bring 
out the excellence of the poem. He shows little independence 
of idea or imagination, and says little that a reader of aver- 
age intelligence would not notice at once by himself,’ but 
the articles are in general amusing because of copious quo- 
tation from the poem itself. They consist for the most part 
of a description of the two main characters, Hudibras and 
Ralpho, the group of comic figures at the bear-baiting in 
Canto IJ, and a running account of the action in the first 
two cantos. He begins by declaring Hudibras a new type of 
poem. He rejects the denominations burlesque poem, mock 
heroic, mock epic, and comes to the brilliant conclusion that 
it can only be called Hudibrastic. He then proceeds formally 
to lay down rules for Hudibrastic composition, and to show 
the nature of its action, characters, and language. His most 
interesting point is made at the end of the fourth article 
where he points out Butler’s ridicule of epic machinery, e.g., 
Pallas descending in the form of rust and preventing Hudi- 
bras from firing his pistol, and Mars bringing the bear for 
him to fall on when he is unhorsed, and so preventing him 
from being brained in the fall. M. J.’s remark that Sir 
Samuel Luke was the original of Hudibras brought the 
information from “W. H.” in number 53 that: 

There was when Butler wrote Hudibras, one Colonel Rolls, a Devon- 
shire man, who lodged with him and was exactly like his description 


of the knight; whence it is highly probable that it was this gentle- 
man and not Sir Samuel whose person he had in his eye. The reason 


* He says, nevertheless, towards the end, “. . . though perhaps I have 
said nothing new to some of your readers... I flatter myself that I 
have set some things in a light in which some of your readers have not 
yet considered them.” 


162 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


that he gave for calling his poem Hudibras was, because the name 
of the old patron Saint of Devonshire was Hugo de Bra. 
Additional annotation of this sort the Journal encouraged 
with the comment, 

We think ourselves obliged to this gentleman for this little hint; and 
we shall be glad if any other persons who can clear up any obscurity 
in that author will, through us, communicate their illustrations to 
the public. 

These articles on Hudibras are, however, the only extended 
instance of impersonal and dispassionate criticism in the 
Journal's whole history. It much preferred apparently to 
deal with living authors, and to denounce rather than com- 
mend. 

Many of the Journal’s attacks on current productions may 
be ascribed to its deep seated suspicion of the booksellers. 
Toward dictionaries, cyclopedias, and histories, it seems to 
have cherished a special hatred, doubtless with some justice, 
for they were often hack-work pure and simple, mere re- 
compilations of old material foisted upon the public by 
booksellers who could find no better grist to grind or wished 
to parallel the successful ventures of their competitors. In 
numbers 170, 172, and 175, for instance, a proposed new 
edition of Stephens’ Thesaurus is duly revealed in its proper 
light by a writer signing himself variously “B. T.” and 
“Calliopius’’ ,? who having given instances of the new editors’ 
stupidity asks scornfully who they are. His attack is sup- 
ported by Bavius, who guarantees the accuracy of his cita- 
tions except at one point. In this case it may be pertinent 
to note that Bavius, or Russel himself, had been for some 
time engaged on a new edition of this work. Another more 
significant instance is the attack at this same period* on the 
prospectus of a new General Dictionary. A correspondent, 
““A. B.,” shows that the editors make promises they do not 
keep and that they attempt to establish a number of false 
impressions. He examines as a specimen their article on 

?In the third article, signed Calliopius, he says that the first two were 


from the same hand, and implies distinctly that it was his. 
“See 171, 178, 179, 182. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 163 


Eastern History, to prove that they had not, as they claimed, 
consulted original Eastern writers, but had taken all their 
material from d’Herbelot’s Dictionary, including with the 
rest all of his many errors. A.B. also points out the excessive 
cost of the new work. The editors defended themselves in 
one of the dailies by charging A.B. not only with distortion 
of facts, misrepresentation, and so forth, but also with an 
interest in a proposed translation of Bayle’s Dictionary, 
which would compete with theirs. In reply A.B. insists on 
his accuracy and justice, offers to adduce as many instances 
of error as may be desired, but equivocates as to his interest 
in the Bayle. Hereupon “The Authors” of the General Dic- 
tionary repeat their defense, declare that A.B. is unfair and 
malicious, and that the Bayle contains as many errors as 
their work. This encounter has all the appearance of a 
squabble between competing booksellers, each of whom is 
trying to secure public favor for his wares at the expense of 
the other.® 

A similar but more protracted quarrel took place in the 
Journal's columns between the booksellers Cave and Watts 
over rival translations of Du Halde’s History of China.® It 
is significant that this discussion from beginning to end is 
concerned with the ethics of the booksellers—with such 
matters as respecting prior rights, living up to promises 
made to subscribers, and so forth. The fact that the bulk of the 
material supports Cave against Watts indicates the Journal’s 
side in the affair. The controversy is, however, altogether in 


°The New General Dictionary. 10 vols. 1734-8. There is another edition 
of the same date in five volumes by Des Maizeaux, which seems to be 
the one followed by later editors. This controversy suggested a letter in 
182 on the value of an index to Bayle. The writer submits a sample index 
to the article on Adam, intended seriously, but very amusing in its 
phraseology. Among the editors was “T. Birch,” but he was Dr. Thomas 
ee and not the “Tim Birch” of the Weekly Register (see Nichols, 

, 960). 

° See Grub-street Journal 354 and 363 ff. A more important bookseller’s 
quarrel is hinted at in Gilliver’s advertisement of Pope’s collected works, 
vol. II (280): “. . . B. Lintot having the property of the former volume 
of poems would never be induced to publish them complete, but only a 
part of them, to which he tacked and imposed on the buyer a whole 
additional volume of other men’s poems.” 


164 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the form of correspondence ; there is no official or “editorial” 
pronouncement. It begins with a defense by “A. B. C.” of 
Cave against Watts—a declaration that Cave’s prospectus 
appeared first, and that he intended to include much material 
that Watts was omitting. Then “P. L.”” (number 363) at- 
tacks Watts’s translation, declaring it an imposition and a 
misrepresentation, since it omitted plates, maps, and even 
whole chapters, and was in addition wretchedly translated, 
and mangled in its proper names; in fact, was stuck full of 
blunders of all sorts. What looks suspiciously like free ad- 
vertising of Cave’s edition appears in number 364 in a num- 
ber of extracts submitted by a correspondent for the sole 
reason that he had enjoyed reading them—passages dealing 
with the duties of man and wife, of friends and relations, 
and with the government of a house and the apartments of 
women. P.L. returned to the attack in number 365, listing 
the serious omissions in Watts’s edition, and pointing out 
that Watts’s advertisements would lead the public to think it 
was getting a complete work. This same issue contains the 
only statement from the other side, a letter from Watts 
himself denying that he had supplanted Cave, and maintain- 
ing that he had undertaken the work after a long period of 
waiting in vain for Cave’s promised translation. As for the 
omissions he was charged with, he argued that Du Halde 
had originally loaded his History with much useless lumber 
in the way of irrelevant description and maps which were 
quite incomprehensible to a European. These he had omitted 
as useless, and as making the book too expensive to be 
popular. In number 367 P. L. developed in detail his charges 
concerning the spelling of proper names and general inac- 
curacy, and in number 368 the episode was concluded with a 
jocose epigram reprinted from the Daily Advertiser— 
If thou has spirit, Cave, proceed 
And for no sculptures’ spare. 


Convince us you in China deal 
But Watts in earthenware, 


7 An allusion to the illustrations and maps, which Watts was accused 
of suppressing to save expense. 


EATERAKY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 165 


and with Cave’s advertisement that his edition would begin 
to appear February first in installments of eight folio sheets 
for one shilling. He also promised an absolutely complete 
work, and in a note described the shortcomings of the rival 
work and announced that he would reprint and distribute 
gratis the letters which had appeared in the Journal and the 
Daily Advertiser.® 

Any suspicion that Cave was consistently supported by 
the Journal, however, is contradicted by a warm controversy 
over two rival astronomical essays which began in number 
369 immediately after the Cave-Watts quarrel. Here there 
appeared a direct charge by one Thomas Wright that George 
Smith of York had plagiarized his “scheme of the late 
eclipse.”” Smith replied in number 371, asserting the origi- 
nality of his scheme, which he declared to be new, and derid- 
ing Wright’s as being forty years old. He also spoke of his 
rival’s impudence and supported himself with numerous 
technicalities—to all of which Wright replied two weeks 
later in a strongly personal vein with charges of weak 
evasions and shifts.? In the meantime the Gentleman’s 
Magazine had published Smith’s scheme, and came in, in 
number 375, for a drubbing from “Phil Filch”, who 
threatened to expose Cave for publishing a piece of work 
supposedly by an unknown George Smith of York, but really 
copied from Wright. The former astronomer was now de- 
fended in his turn in number 376 by “Phil. Aret.’’ who 
asserted positively not only the existence of George Smith 
of York, but also his superiority to Wright in the field of 
astronomy. This correspondent also defended the magazines, 

*Two short criticisms (184 and 190) of Chamber’s proposed Cyclo- 
paedia offer an instance of less biased criticism. The writer, while in 
sympathy with Chambers, considers his project of collecting materials by 
general invitation impractical since scholars will not turn in material 
they have worked out for themselves. He also takes exception to various 
other details of the work, but thinks it on the whole extremely important, 
as such compilations form the basis of a library. He believes that money 
should be spent to get together the proper authorities to work on a 
monument of this sort. 


fee ep esements of both pamphlets appear on the back page of num- 
ber 370. 


166 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


declaring that he himself had never objected to having his 
articles in the Journal taken over into them. In spite of a 
letter in number 377 signed by Smith himself and refuting 
certain technical charges made by Wright, Phil Filch again 
denied in the following issue, number 378, that Smith ex- 
isted, insisting that he himself knew nothing of him, though 
he knew York well, and that acquaintances in York to whom 
he had written had never heard of such a person. He also 
asserted that he did not know Wright either, and that he was 
interested merely in exposing Cave’s plagiarisms. The whole 
affair came to an inconsequential end in number 379 with 
a letter from “Tom Tell Troth” declaring that Smith’s 
scheme was stolen from the work of an Italian, Manfredi, 
and offering to prove it by documents. One is finally left to 
draw his own conclusions as to the existence of Smith and 
the respective merits of the two schemes.?° 

These various quarrels are typical of the Journal’s ex- 
cursions into what might be called the secondary, not to say 
tertiary, fields of literature. Such attacks were very probably 
dictated by the antagonism of the editors and correspondents 
of the Journal toward their natural enemies the booksellers, 
except in a case like the Cave-Watts quarrel, where Cave had 
obviously enlisted the services of the Journal on his side. 
The booksellers were of course thoroughly sordid and com- 
mercial in their system of hacking, and these attacks may be 
taken as laudable attempts to expose a vicious practice. Yet 
even the Journal could see the possibility of another point of 
view. In number 214, “Jeremiah Gimcrack”’ tells the story 
of his relations as a young author with a bookseller. He says 
that though his work was successful he never had income 
from it, the returns being all swallowed up in charges for 
. expenses in printing and et caetera’s. Bavius comments on 


*” Note also an attack on a school edition of Persius by a schoolmaster 
named Sterling. This edition had been exploited as illustrating a new 
method for the easy acquisition of Latin; as one ironical critic said, a 
method which was to make all England happy. Apparently the brilliance 
of Sterling’s idea consisted chiefly in the rearrangement of verse in 
prose order. See 370, 372, 375, 378. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 167 


this letter oddly enough in support of the bookseller, who, 
he says, advanced money at the beginning, and was doubt- 
less justified in his various charges for et caetera’s. More- 
over, Bavius contends, many young writers overrated the 
value of their work and the extent of its sale; in fact book- 
sellers were sometimes ruined by authors, as well as authors 
by booksellers. 

In general, however, booksellers might look for little 
sympathy in the columns of the Journal. Quite characteristic 
of the usual attitude toward them is an attack (number 
247) ona current device of selling books to the poorer classes 
by printing them in sixpenny installments. The writer scoffs 
at the professed philanthropic motive of this scheme, and 
declares that it is not in any case for the good of the poor, 
who need their money for food and clothing. He even goes 
so far as to assert hard-headedly, “I used to think that 
nineteen in twenty of the species were designed by nature for 
trade and manufactures; and that to take them off to read 
books was the way to do them harm, to make them, not 
wiser or better, but impertinent, troublesome, and factious.”’ 
According to him, booksellers and compositors get together 
in clans and do so well with weekly pamphlets that a genuine 
author has little chance. The Knaptons, for instance, who 
were publishing a translation of Rapin in this way, were 
expected to make between eight and ten thousand pounds 
from their venture. 

Of any sort of plagiarism or piracy the Journal was 
always especially contemptuous. Its own sense of self-right- 
eousness in this respect appears strikingly in its reply in the 
Pegasus column of number 246 to a request that it reprint, 
in an extra sheet if necessary, the Tatlers and the Specta- 
tors, a project to be undertaken in the interests both of 
amusement and morality. Bavius points out that to reprint 
books already in circulation would be not only unjust and 
piratical, but also impractical, especially in the present in- 
stance, where the papers suggested were very easily obtaina- 


168 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ble. When hard pressed for material, however, the poorer 
newspapers did actually reprint books chapter by chapter. 

Throughout the Journal one finds, as might be expected, 
a conservative and pessimistic attitude toward current literary 
production and the taste of the age:—Writing in general is 
bad, but is tolerated by the low culture of the time, and 
despite the valiant and bitterly fought battles of such 
guardians of art and taste as the Journal itself, probably 
little improvement is to be hoped for. Although there was 
doubtless truth enough in such a point of view, the general 
impression it creates is one of bitterness and disappointment 
in the writers themselves; as though they themselves had 
offered the public the bright flame of true literature, and had 
been passed by unnoticed and unrewarded. A strikingly 
typical illustration of this attitude appears in a letter by “H. 
W.” in number 149 on Scribendi Cacoethes. H. W. decries 
the existence of the crowd of scribblers who sink the deeper, 
the higher they try to soar. No man, he says, safely enough, 
can be a writer unless he has genius, yet a writer should not 
give up hope merely because his work is not popular. Some 
writers are too conceited—they raise their readers’ hopes 
only to dash them ; while others, discouraged by a recognition 
of their limitations, give up all effort. The careful writer 
will be encouraged by men of sense, although he may not 
meet with universal applause. Still, the general taste of the. 
age is bad; it supports noise and nonsense, and “‘a man who 
can furnish a loose poem, or an atheistical discourse, is pre- 
ferred to a solid reasoner or an impartial historian.” Such 
a diatribe, it would seem, might slip easily from the pen of 

* An interesting instance of barefaced plagiarism is related in 356 by 
John Colson, the author of a Comment on Newton’s Method of Fluxions. 
A certain “Dr.” Philip Nichols, alias Charles Rhodes, who had been 
expelled from Cambridge for various offences, among them the stealing 
of books, had imposed on various people, including Colson, had got his 
hands on some of the manuscript of the Comment which was at the time 
in press, and had undertaken to get it published beforehand. He did 
apparently succeed in inducing some unwary bookseller to publish the 
book, and Colson gives a list of errata in it to prove definitely that the 


whole work, errata and all, had been plagiarized from him, Rhodes not 
even having taken the trouble to correct errata in the reprinting. 


ERERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 169 


an orthodox literary critic in almost any sophisticated age. 
Its sense is repeated continually in the more scathing per- 
sonal attacks of Bavius and of the numerous literary corre- 
spondents of the Journal. It is, however, cast into a more 
original and humorous mould by one signing himself 
“Scriblerus cum Dasho,” in a history of the excise on Dul- 
ness (numbers 172, 174, 176, April and May, 1733). This 
history tells in chronicle style of the thwarted attempt to 
substitute an excise on Dulness for the one on wine and 
tobacco. It opens with the elaborate date “In the seventeen 
hundred and thirty-third year, in the third month of the said 
year (Colleius Kiberus being Laureate of Great Britain, 
France and Ireland; Johannes Oldmixonus Historiographer 
and Edmundus Curleius Biographer in chief of the said do- 
minions).” The author proceeds to explain the excise as it 
was and to detail all its evils, especially its effect on courage 
and policy; that is, among soldiers and the disputants in the 
coffee houses. He then tells of the scheme to change the ex- 
cise from wine and tobacco to Dulness. The manufacture of 
this commodity, he explains, flourished exceedingly at this 
period, in spite of the stamp tax and the tax on paper. The 
numerous dealers in it (among them the writers of news- 
papers, the booksellers, and the laureate) were at once 
aroused, formed a combination against it, offered up burnt 
sacrifice of their wares to the Goddess of Dulness, and 
succeeded in thwarting the whole scheme. 

The sum of such material as the foregoing—the discussion 
of individual books or of literary and critical questions and 
conditions—is altogether surprisingly slight, once the per- 
sonal attacks on Bentley, Theobald, the newspapers, and 
its various other enemies are excepted. Of dramatic and 
theatrical matter in the Journal there is on the other hand a 
great plenty. This is of course what one might expect. Since 
the drama in the 1730’s was still the most popular form of 
literature, and the London audiences were being continually 
regaled with new performances of all sorts, including not 
only the legitimate forms of tragedy, comedy, and farce, but 


170 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


also pantomimes, operas, and nondescript entertainments, it 
is not surprising to find continual reference in the Journal 
to the theater and its affairs. This material is most interest- 
ing perhaps as a reminder that the problems of the practical 
theater are perennial, and that the mutual relations between 
authors, players, managers, and audience give rise in one 
age as well as another to difficulties which are, it would seem, 
beyond solution. There is the actor’s struggle for inde- 
pendence from the manager and his insistence that he is the 
keystone in the dramatic arch, and on the other hand, the 
manager’s firmly fixed intention to direct his property, the 
theater, and his employees, the actors, as he sees fit. There 
is the outcry from one portion of the audience against the 
obscenity of the stage, and the debasing of what ought to 
be a great instrument of education into a mere channel for 
vain, frivolous, and even degrading shows and entertain- 
ments. There is the protest against foreign artists and per- 
formers; the English-speaking world has always depended 
on them, and is always inveighing against them and fulmi- 
nating patriotic encouragement of native talent. And there 
are also the complaints of authors regarding the mutilation 
of their plays, and the poor taste and lack of discrimination 
in audiences which condemn masterpieces. These perennial 
subjects for discussion are raised as often in the columns 
of the Journal as they are in those of a modern periodical. 
As far as the theater was concerned, the period was, of 
course, a mediocre one. The plays produced were, taken alto- 
gether, worse than mediocre; the most successful author 
writing for the stage was Henry Fielding, and his forte lay 
elsewhere. Nor were there any actors of really first rank; 
nearly all the names that are remembered at all today—Cib- 
ber, Kitty Clive, Rich, Macklin—are associated especially 
with comedy and that largely of the broader type. The names 
of Wilkes and Booth are hardly to be put into the category 
with Burbage, Betterton, or Siddons. Still, it must be said 
that the level of acting as marked by the better actors was 
probably much higher than that of the authors who fur- 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 171 


nished them with new parts. In view of such conditions, 
distinguished criticism, either in current comment or in dis- 
cussion of general dramatic principles and ideas, was hardly 
to be hoped for. At any rate it failed to appear, quite possibly 
because there was so little to stimulate it. The material in 
the Journal, then, is interesting, not as being distinguished 
or brilliant, although it is very often lively, sharp, and brisk, 
but rather as it furnishes a sort of typical cross-section of 
dramatic history. 

On the whole, the idea that stands out most clearly and 
that is most frequently reiterated is the somewhat academic 
one that the taste of the age was distressingly corrupt. The 
audience, according to the critics, was uneducated and un- 
refined, and its natural tastes were gross and low. It rejected 
or was indifferent toward the fine classical tragedies and the 
warmed-over Restoration comedies which were prepared in 
great numbers for its delectation, and guzzled at the trough 
of “entertainments”, pantomimes, and shows offered it by 
those who were willing to pander to its tastes. As a result 
the stage was abdicating its high mission and debasing itself 
into a sink of corruption, both moral and artistic. Maevius, 
criticising The Humours of Oxford in numbers 6 and 7, 
notes sarcastically that the author has taken care not to leave 
out of his dialogue “the fashionable ornaments of pruriency,”’ 
and, by placing them in the mouths of characters where they 
would be least expected, has increased the interest and sur- 
prise of the audience. The correspondents on this subject 
display all the fanaticism one would expect. “Theatricus” 
(number 135) ascribes the degeneracy of the youth of the 
time to the degeneracy of the stage with its ridiculous, stupid, 
obscene, and infamous plays, and characteristically proposes 
a board of censorship with power not only to reject the im- 
proper, but to require the presentation of the edifying. 
Another writer, anonymous, (number 202) in a letter “Of 
the use and abuse of the stage,” deplores the current quarrel 
between actors and managers!” and declares that both sides 


“See post, pp. 214 ff. 


172 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


should have spent their energy raising the standard of the 
theater. In his opinion there were too many theaters, 
especially since they competed with each other only in sing- 
ing, dancing, and immorality. Practically all the stage was 
perverted, catering to the lower passions in its attempts to 
attract the vulgar crowd, with a resultant deplorable effect 
on the young. Still another letter in much the same vein, 
advocating a moral and artistic censorship of the theater, 
appeared in number 221. The writer contends that under 
wise regulation the stage would be highly conducive to the 
public benefit. He discusses the regulation of public health 
by the state as an analogous situation, and wishes that Parlia- 
ment might “erect a society of the most ingenious and polite 
persons, through whose hands all performances for the stage 
should pass before they were exhibited to public view.” Then 
worthy citizens might let their wives and daughters go to 
the theater without fear of corruption! “Nothing that was 
not improving would be suffered to appear; morality and 
good breeding would be inculcated, and true wit and humor, 
the pleasing vehicles of instruction, would, by a noble emula- 
tion amongst our writers at length arrive at such a standard 
as must in a little time render the English taste the most 
refined of any in the world.’’ Now, he complains, the ladies 
seem to hear with pleasure “the grossest obscenities,” and he 
expatiates with special horror on a performance of Carey’s 
burlesque, Chrononhotonthologos, to which people of the 
highest quality crowded, deriving great enjoyment from its 
improprieties. He quotes objectionable lines from the songs 
which were received “with smiles from the fair and loud 
applauses from the gentlemen.” Still another moralist, a self- 
styled “Cato” (number 315), who had been outraged by the 
immodest dancing of a Mlle. Roland, complains that matters 
have reached such a pass that if the play has no harm in it it 
is accompanied by two or three immodest dances, and fol- 
lowed by ‘“‘a farce which teaches no good lesson to our 
wives, sisters, and daughters.”’ A later contributor (number 
352) in a crudely ironical letter even goes so far as to assert 


ETGERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 173 


that the sole purpose of the theater is pruriency and a stimu- 
lation of business in the adjacent houses of ill repute in 
Drury Lane. 

Although it is hard to believe that the editors of the Jour- 
nal could really have been shocked at the liberties which 
dramatists took in dialogue and situation, their chief indict- 
ment of Fielding’s comedies in one of their most important 
theatrical quarrels was for obscenity. The Journal had de- 
voted little attention to Fielding’s earliest plays,1? The 
Author's Farce, Tom Thumb, and so forth, but in 173214 
it undertook a frontal and sustained attack on him for his 
immorality. 

This quarrel, like many others begun in the Journal, finally 
involved several other papers, and gradually degenerated 
into personal attacks, and inquisitions into opponents’ mo- 
tives, intelligence, and general character. It began with a 
single, detached letter from “Dramaticus” in number 117, 
but broke out into a steady fire of correspondence and edi- 
torial denunciation ten weeks later in number 127, after 
which it kept the center of the Journal’s stage for nearly 
three months. The plays abused were the The Covent Garden 
Tragedy, The Modern Husband, The Old Debauchees, and 
The Mock Doctor, especially the two first. In number 117, 
Dramaticus,!® who says he saw The Modern Husband at its 
first performance and has since carefully read it over, de- 
clares that the play is neither diverting nor instructive, and 
that Fielding has no true notion of comedy. He condemns 
the characters as thin, silly, and unoriginal, and says that 
although he did note an occasional good touch he had to 
wade through filth to get it. 

This attack, however, was mild as compared with the 
storm of righteous indignation which burst upon the un- 

#8 See however 17, 18, 23, 38, 75. In 75 appears a notice signed Bavius 
addressed to all the members of the Grubstreet Society asking them to 
assemble to see the first performance of The Grubstreet Opera, and orders 


the author, “Scriblerus Secundus” (Fielding), to have a large chair for 


Bavius in a front box. 
* See 117-141, March 30-September 10. 
** A frequent correspondent. See 112, et cetera. 


174 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


fortunate Covent Garden Tragedy.'® A correspondent call- 
ing himself ‘“Prosaicus’” (number 127) tells of being taken 
by a friend, “‘a man of pleasure,” to see The Covent Garden 
Tragedy. He was deeply shocked at the characters produced, 
and could only conclude that many of the audience did not 
understand what they were seeing, namely, “a dull repre- 
sentation of the most obscene characters in life.’’ Were this 
acceptable, any Drury Lane bully might make a humorous 
poet. The success of such a piece will, he declares, indicate the 
low taste of the town; it is “‘the most dull, obscene piece 
that ever appeared on a public stage.” 

Prosaicus was outdone in his indictment by Dramaticus 
(number 128), who, upon seeing the first performance of 
the play, believed that “Such a scene of infamous lewdness 
was never brought before on any stage whatsoever.” The 
managers, he thinks, might as well take the audience to a 
Drury Lane bawdy house. He describes himself as a rejected 
author, who is forced to think that his plays were not bad 
enough to suit the taste of the town, but he declares that if 
the public wants such stuff, he could not (God forbid!) 
undertake to write for it; nothing could justify such an out- 
rage on decency. 

These righteous outcries in the Journal drew forth spirited 
defenses in the Daily Post, mingled with the usual counter 
attacks and personalities. Apparently the Daily Post had 
been Fielding’s special avenue of publicity. In it had ap- 
peared on June 16, 1732, an obvious puff-preliminary of 
The Mock Doctor: 


* Apparently in retaliation for attacks on The Modern Husband, Field- 
ing made several slighting allusions to the Journal in The Covent Garden 
Tragedy. The Prolegomena contains burlesque criticism of the play by 
ignorant critics, one of whom qualifies as an expert on the basis of his 
having read the Craftsman, the Grub-street Journal, The Rape of the 
Lock, and parts of a history of the King of Sweden (Charles XII, by 
Voltaire). He also says he thought The Modern Husband “a good play, 
till the Grub-street Journal assured me it was not.” There is also an 
illiterate and pompous “Criticism on the Covent Garden Tragedy, origin- 
ally intended for the Grubstreet Journal,’ the style of which may be 
judged by its reference to “Aristuttle’ and “Horase.” In the text itself 
appears one allusion to the Journal; in Act I, Scene i, a pimp is told— 

For thou hast learnt to read, hast playbills read, 
The Grub-street Journal thou hast known to write. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 175 


We hear there is now in rehearsal at the Theatre Royal in Drury 
Lane a new farce called The Mock Doctor or The Dumb Lady 
Cured. The piece of Moliere from which this is altered and adapted 
to the English stage is justly esteemed to contain the purest and 
most natural humor that has appeared in any language. As the Old 
Debauchees (which is not long enough in itself for a whole night’s 
entertainment) has met with great applause in the town, the author, 
lest it might suffer by the addition of any old worn-out entertain- 
ments, has permitted this performance to come on at a more dis- 
advantageous season than he at first intended. 


Then, in answer to the Journal’s onslaughts there appeared 
on June 21 in the Post and also in the London Evening Post 
a “Letter to Dramaticus, alias Prosaicus, alias Bavius, alias, 
etc., etc., etc.,”” and signed ‘““Theatre Royal Ale-House, from 
—your No very good friend nor admirer, Mr. Wm. Hint, 
Candle Snuffer.” “Hint’’!7 begins by maintaining that when 
such a set of scribblers as the Grubstreet writers set up as 
critics, anyone, even a candle-snuffer, may be an author, and 
that even he, Hint, may answer a critic of his own rank, who 
has had a place and a play refused. He charges the Journal 
with ungenerous motives in its attack, since The Covent 
Garden Tragedy had been withdrawn at once, and had been 
published only as a defense against the earlier attacks upon 
it. He points out further that vicious characters upon the 
stage are not an innovation, and declares the real occasion 
of the Journal’s animosity to be the lines in which it had 
been mentioned contemptuously. He then turns personal, 
saying that Dramaticus, alias Prosaicus, should have sup- 
ported his points with quotations, and that it was easy to 
see from his writing why his play had been refused. More- 
over, he continues, as far as the Journal was concerned, its 
own success was a greater proof of the low taste of the age 

* Quite possibly Fielding himself. The manner is not unlike his, and 
he is later alluded to as “Hint.” Or it may have been Theophilus Cibber 
collaborating with Fielding (Cross, History of Henry Fielding, I, 133). 
In 130, Russel (“M”) implies that Hint stood for these two together 
(see post, p. 177), but in 136 (see post, p. 180) he states definitely that 
Hint was Fielding. He says here with obvious bitterness that Fielding 
had “inveighed bitterly among his acquaintance against the Grub-street 


Journal, representing the authors of it as a set of paltry, ill-natured, and 
ignorant scribblers.” 


176 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


than was that of Hurlothrumbo. To “Hint’s” effusion 
Bavius retorted the very next day (number 129, June 22) 
in his most acrid style. He reprinted from the Daily Post a 
notice that The Old Debauchees had succeeded, and went 
on to say that the Post had also announced the favorable 
reception of the “damned Common or Covent Garden 
Tragedy.” 
We hear they were both illuminated by Mr. Hint, Candle-Snuffer, 
who finding the latter fit only to be acted in the dark snuffed out the 
candles. Hence it has only stunk, but has not been seen since. This 
gentleman has written a learned defence of both, in which it is 
evident that some sad comi-tragical Grubean had both a finger and 
thumb. 
In this same issue appeared a letter from ‘‘Poeticus,”’ asking 
if Dramaticus’ failure to prosecute his attack for the last 
ten weeks (since number 119) was due to his having had his 
play accepted, and in case this was so, enclosing “verses of 
recantation” for him to sing to the manager of the theater. 
Poeticus’ hint that the Journal and its correspondents were 
losing interest in the squabble was unfounded. The next issue 
of the Journal contained three items dealing with it. Pro- 
saicus reappeared with a promise of regular remarks on all 
new productions, and for a beginning chose The Modern 
Husband, of which “scarce a scene . . . but what betrays 
want of judgment, or, to use softer terms, manifests at least 
the author’s hasty way of writing.”’ Fielding, he says, should 
be encouraged by his success with the town to take more 
pains. On the other hand, at least he cannot be charged with 
puffing ; doubtless he had had no hand in a puff of The Old 
Debauchees in the Daily Post for June 16. The second item 
is an answer by A. B. to Hint’s letter. A. B. replies to Hint’s 
defense of Fielding against the charge of indecency, that 
while such characters are doubtless legitimate, appearing even 
in Roman comedy, still an author need not depend solely 
on that class, and such offensive action as Fielding shows 
is unnecessary. He protests that he is unbiassed against 
Fielding personally, and fails to see why the objects of his 
satire should resent it—it is so dull. As for citing passages 


DIPERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 177 


to prove indecency, Hint’s challenge to Dramaticus, there 
was no need to do so; any passage illustrated it, as would 
appear if the play were published (as it had been, according 
to Hint). And finally, in the third item, Dramaticus defends 
himself and the Journal against the charges of Hint, and 
reasserts the vileness of The Covent Garden Tragedy. He 
declares that though he had thought at first Hint had no 
real existence, he had come to change his mind; Hint’s letter 
was exactly such as a candle-snuffer might write. The Grub- 
street Journal, he continues, can stand such phrases as “a 
set of scribblers giving laws to the theatre,’ for words of 
this sort have been applied before by the same kind of critics 
to “the wittiest papers, from the Tatlers, Spectators, etc., 
down to the Grub-street Journal.” Whatever Hint may say, 
the fact remains that the Journal “is, in the opinion of the 
town, a paper that contains much real wit and humor’, and 
from now on will be increasingly useful in attacking enormi- 
ties on the stage. For his own part, he doubts whether his 
play would have been rejected if the managers had known 
who he was. He thinks his papers have been well received, 
and is willing to let the town judge of his dramatic ability 
from his discussions here ; his play had been rejected as being 
“sensible and pretty, only not theatrical.’ As for the subject 
of the present quarrel, the lewdness of The Covent Garden 
Tragedy is plain enough, and need not be read into it. Such 
characters and action as Fielding uses are improper; and the 
same might be said of The Beggar’s Opera, though that had 
wit to redeem it. 

Here also appeared a typical Grubean contribution savor- 
ing strongly of Russel, a certificate signed with the mark of 
William Hint, declaring that he had not written the letter 
he had been credited with, and that he had always thought 
Fielding’s plays either above his comprehension or beneath 
his notice. He further deposes that it was written by Field- 
ing and C[ibber] together at Mrs. —ld-m’s. The editors 
then express doubts concerning the authenticity of this cer- 
tificate, which might be forged; certainly Hint’s letter had 


178 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


been written with more spirit than Fielding’s and Cibber’s 
letters dedicatory. On the other hand, there was the possi- 
bility that they wrote better over the name of a candle- 
snuffer. At any rate, they continued, one member who had 
read The Covent Garden Tragedy thought its lewdness ex- 
aggerated, but suggested that a thorough explanation of it 
would increase its sale among the ladies of Drury Lane. 

In the meantime the Comedian'® had been enlisted in 
Fielding’s service, and in 132 Dramaticus again appeared to 
point out the falsity of its logic in excusing the young author 
on the ground of haste and in glossing over the deficiencies 
of The Modern Husband, simply because it had a few good 
points. As for statements that Fielding had taken the con- 
troversy lightly, Dramaticus hints at a violent meeting with 
Gilliver, the Journal’s printer, and a near approach to blows 
“at which it was thought the Bookseller, as usual, would 
have had the advantage of the Tragedian.” Here Bavius 
also comments on the faulty logic of the Comedian, and like- 
wise writes, over the name of ‘‘Miso-Clericus,’ an ironic 
attack on The Old Debauchees, which he takes as an assault 
upon all the clergy. He cites lines in the play on the vices of 
priests and concludes ironically, ‘Priests of all religions are 
the same.’’ The play is, he says, an addition to the mass of 
literature—prose, verse, and cartoons—on the story of 
Father Girard and Miss Cadiere; now ‘a Gentleman of a 
surprising genius wrought it into a play.”’ Russel, as always, 
was here resenting a possible affront to the clergy. 

The charges of immorality and obscenity were vigorously 
renewed in number 133 by a new correspondent, “‘Publicus.” 
The latter goes so far as to declare that the abolition of the 

% A new paper edited by Thomas Cooke, and hostile to Pope. In its 
second number, May, 1732, appears an attack on Pope’s Epistle to the 
‘Earl of Burlington. Its third contains “Reflections on some modern 
plays,” a defense of Fielding’s Modern Husband as superior to other 
current plays, and its sixth an epigram on Fielding, the persecuted— 

When Grubs and Grublings censure Fielding’s scenes, 
He cannot answer that which nothing means, etc. 


In a note to 132 in the Memoirs, it is said of the Comedian that it lasted 
eight months, and that its sale never paid for paper and print. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 179 


stage is as much to be wished as that of brothels, and asserts 
that managers hire their authors with the express purpose 
of insulting the common sense and modesty of their audience. 
For horrible examples he singles out especially The Covent 
Garden Tragedy and The Old Debauchees, and speaks of 
their having been defended by “pander newspapers” after 
they had been condemned by the town. Against The Covent 
Garden Tragedy especially he reiterates the old charges of 
obscenity and grossness, and in citing examples to prove his 
point apologizes to Bavius for having to defile his pages with 
such filth. The Old Debauchees he also lashes for its coarse, 
foolish dialogue and its impiety and immorality. He de- 
clares, “When such things as these are suffered on the stage, 
’tis no wonder there are so many whores and pickpockets 
in the streets,” and says of Fielding, “. . . his pen is not 
only void of wit, manners, and modesty, but likewise of the 
most common rules of poetry and even grammar.” This 
diatribe was supported by an epigram signed “F. N.”— 

*Tis strange you say in this refined age 

That brothels, bawds, and whores adorn the stage. 

I think ’tis not. They justly law the scene, 

Don’t Drury Playhouse stand in Drury Lane? 

And own you must; tho void of wit, or art 

They naturally write and act their part. 

In the next numbers the bombardment continued unabated. 
In number 134, Dramaticus divided authors into two classes, 
the venal and the gentlemen, describing the first as those who 
write for profit only, and abandon an unsuccessful play with- 
out defense to save a more successful one, as Fielding had 
done with The Covent Garden Tragedy. He also refers 
again to the lack of judgment among the managers and the 
rejection of his own play, and presents as a logical axiom 
the statement that a gentleman with leisure should write 
better than “any venal poet, that lives only by the numerous 
productions of his too-often-drained brains.” The following 
week, apropos of the controversy, appeared the letter by 
Theatricus already referred to,’® railing at the immorality 


™ See p. 171. 


180 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


of the stage and suggesting a rigid censorship, and also a 
reply by Dramaticus to a ““Dramaticus Senior” of the Daily 
Courant for July 29. The latter had written an elaborate 
and dull defense of a third person who had been defending 
Fielding in the Comedian and whom Dramaticus had accused 
of bad logic. In these letters the quarrel departs from its cen- 
tral point and becomes involved almost entirely in discussions 
of methods of debate and of proper logical processes—a not 
uncommon occurrence in the Journal’s quarrels. Fielding 
himself now took up the cudgels in his own defense, writing 
as ‘“Philalethes” in the Daily Post for July 31,?° and was 
immediately answered in the Journal by ‘“Publicus.” Phila- 
lethes, having declared that The Old Debauchees had met 
with as great applause as was ever given “on the theater,” 
was reminded that the audience of the third night was so 
small it had to be dismissed. Moreover, Publicus points out 
the weakness and irrelevance of Philalethes’ argument in 
merely complaining that speeches had been torn from their 
context, and in presenting “an account of the birth, parent- 
age and education of the writer [Fielding]. Publicus, how- 
ever, like the other debaters, wanders from his point and 
betrays a characteristic personal animus in dissecting scorn- 
fully such phrases of his opponent as on the theatre and 
human wish [for humane], and in declaring that the success 
of The Mock Doctor was due altogether to its acting, “every- 
one agreeing that ’tis as ill written as well acted.” This 
answer to Philalethes was supplemented by one of Russel’s 
pointed but remarkably clumsy epigrams— 


Charged with writing of bawdy, this was F—’s reply— 
’Tis what Dryden and Congreve have done as well as I. 
’Tis true, but they did it with this good pretence, 

With an ounce of rank bawdy went a pound of good sense. 
But thou hast proportioned, in thy judgment profound 

Of good sense scarce an ounce, and of bawdy a pound.?! 


Russel himself, in fact, now struck out with both fists. For 


the next issue (number 136) he wrote a résumé of the con- 


2 This letter has been reprinted in full by Cross in The History of 
Henry Fielding, 1, 135. L 
1 Signed Maevius, and ascribed to “M” in the Memoirs. 


Lien AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 181 


troversy. In powerful and savagely bitter invective he refers 
to Fielding as “a venal and venereal poet” and defends the 
Journal against its detractors. He likewise published in the 
Pegasus column of the same issue an ironical defense of The 
Covent Garden Tragedy against the unfair attacks of Pro- 
saicus, Dramaticus, and Publicus, and proves the quality of 
the play by summarizing the action and citing typical lines 
in such a manner as to intensify their objectionable quali- 
ties.2? The next week he continued his attack with comments 
on Fielding’s Prolegomena to the same play, wondering 
whether the playwright was pretending to satire in his re- 
marks therein on The Rape of the Lock, the Craftsman and 
Monsieur Voltaire, and pointing out a garbled passage from 
The Dunciad with lines from another author attached to it.?° 
In the course of this analysis most of Fielding’s earlier 
plays are alluded to disparagingly. The generally hostile 
attitude of the Journal to Cibber and Fielding and all their 
concerns is also made evident in this issue in an epigram 
praising ironically ““Miss Raftor [Kitty Clive] on her suc- 
cess in acting Polly Peachum’— 

By Hint and Keyber formed to please the age 

See little Raftor mount the Drury stage. 

Fenton24 outdone, with her no more compares 

Than Gay’s best songs with Hint’s Mock Doctor airs. 


Lament, O Rich, thy labours all are vain— 
Hint writes and Raftor acts in Drury Lane. 


The quarrel came to an end with a criticism of Fielding’s 
current plays by Prosaicus ;?° and in number 141 an extended 
answer by Russel to Philalethes’ “slanders”’ against the Jour- 
nal, and two final epigrams, one “On a poet’s pleading the 
example of Congreve, Wycherley, etc. for writing of 
bawdry,” to the effect that Fielding, who follows the masters 
only in “their smutty strain,’ may be set right by the boxes 

* The résumé is signed “Bavius” and the second item “B. B.,” but both 
are ascribed to “M.” Russel omitted the citations when reprinting in the 
Memoirs. 

* Compare p. 174, n. 


* The original Polly. 
*In number 138. This letter is quoted extensively by Cross (I, 140). 


182 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


on the ear dealt him by Bavius, and the other on the acting 
of The Mock Doctor at Smithfield under the title of The 
Forced Physician. In his final remarks Prosaicus bestows 
grudging and qualified praise on The Mock Doctor. He says 
he is unaware how much credit is due to Moliére, but thinks 
that it is “an entertaining farcical piece,” and as for the act- 
ing, that alone would not have saved it if it had been alto- 
gether bad.?° 

Hereafter one runs upon a few widely scattered allusions 
to Fielding, but in its later years the Journal made no sus- 
tained attack on him. There appear (number 179) verses?* 
addressed “To a Gentleman who had bound up some of 
Swift’s and Pope’s poems with one of F—s plays,” and 
described ‘“‘as censuring an author who has long been en- 
listed among the Grubs”; in a denunciatory character sketch 
of a flirt (number 268) the writer announces, “I will venture 
to say there is not a woman in England of this character but 
what has ruined more young ladies than either the Charitable 


*In addition to the usual remarks on imitation and indecency, Pro- 
saicus says he defers to Fielding’s birth, but that birth does not entitle 
him to claim wit—he would have no poet “pique himself on his family 
or his school.” The Journal itself would not go so far as Prosaicus. It 
had copied a note (130) from the Daily Post and London Evening Post 
concerning performances of The Old Debauchees and The Mock Doctor, 
to the effect that the Medicin malgré lui “bears the best reputation of any 
petit piece in the French language, and many good judges allow the 
English farce is no way inferior to the original”; and then commented 
sardonically, “These good judges are certainly members of our society, 
and I hope the world will take their words that the author is no way 
inferior to Moliére.” 

71 Say wretch, what enmity, what rage 
Could thus provoke thee to profane 
The pure inimitable page 
Of Pope and our unrivalled Dean? 


Thy F—’s labours thus to save 
Extremely elegant and nice is, 

Like wise Egyptians from the grave 
Preserving carcasses with spices. 


In this position be assured 

He’s more conspicuously undone, 

For Mercury’s but more obscured 
By being placed too near the sun. 


PU BCAKY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 183 


Corporation?® or Beau Fielding”; and a sharply worded 
notice that Mr. Pope had not been present as had been stated, 
at a performance of Fielding’s Pasquin, and “we think it very 
probable that a person of his uncommon sense and wit will 
not have any curiosity to see it acted at all.”?° At this time®® 
also the Journal printed a long attack on Pasquin over the 
signature “Marforio.”*? This article is an analysis with fre- 
quent quotation to bring out the lack of aptness and even 
the confusion and nonsense of Fielding’s allegory. The open- 
ing paragraphs are carefully veiled and to an unsuspecting 
reader would seem to be genuine praise, but the writer grows 
bolder and more obvious as he progresses. His chief resent- 
ment seems to be against Fielding’s satire on the professions, 
especially divinity.2 On the whole, it would be hard to deny 
that the Journal displays a strong bias against Fielding. Its 
few allusions to his first pieces are in the sarcastic tone which 
it used of most new and unknown writers, and its abuse of his 
plays of 1732 was occasioned, one cannot help thinking, by 
the satirical allusions in The Covent Garden Tragedy to the 
Journal itself. The quarrel opens with letters from a number 
of pseudonymous correspondents with whose outraged sen- 
sibilities the Journal finds itself so much in sympathy as to 
give them at first publicity, and later the support of frequent 
and lengthy editorial utterance of a most caustic nature. As 
has been said before, the editors of the Journal may have had 
artistic or academic objections to “obscenity” in stage liter- 
ature, but one can hardly believe, considering their own way 

78 See Nichols, I], 14—One of the fraudulent financial schemes of the 
time, “for relief of the industrious poor, by assessing them with small 
sums upon pledges at legal interest.’’ The Journal allowed a considerable 
amount of space in its columns to an exposé of it. (See numbers 127 ff.) 

* See 329, and also 331 for further comment on the same point. 

* Tn 330 and 332. 

“In Pasquin Fielding had attacked the nondescript theatrical enter- 
tainments in which Rich specialized, and Rich had retaliated with a satire 
called Marforio. Rich had, by the way, refused Pasquin. 

* Allusions to Fielding may also be found in 150 “Scriblerus Secundus,” 
and 203, although this latter may be simply to the mountebank Fielding 
of Smithfield with whom the more famous Henry has been confused, 


sometimes purposely by contemporary satirists, but inadvertently by 
later historians. 


184 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


of writing and their discrimination in editing, that they were 
actually shocked or offended. Anyone familiar with the man- 
ners and methods of the period will realize that Fielding had 
probably his unfortunate allusions to the Journal to thank for 
the very considerable drubbing he received in its columns.** 

Who all his assailants were it is impossible to say. Russel’s 
authorship of numerous articles and epigrams signed Bavius, 
Maevius, and B. B. is revealed in the Memoirs. Russel was 
quite probably also the Marforio of the attack on Pasquin; 
this would be indicated especially by the writer’s sensitiveness 
and resentment toward satire on the clergy. On the other 
hand the insinuation by Fielding’s defenders that Prosaicus, 
Dramaticus, and the rest, were mere disguises for Bavius or 
Russel is certainly not to be accepted. None of them writes 
like Russel, and the most important of the lot, Dramaticus, 
revealed himself almost conclusively to be Sir William 
Yonge. This gentleman had theatrical ambitions, had collab- 
orated in an entertainment in 1730, and was the recipient at 
just this time of a tribute called Of Modern Wit. An epistle 
to the Rt. Hon. Sir William Young. Dramaticus is contin- 
ually harping on the fact that he is a gentleman, that his work 
would be accepted if he cared to exert personal pressure, but 
that he writes merely for pleasure. Moreover, he says (num- 
ber 119) “I cannot conclude without returning my brother 
C— J—n* thanks for his kind epistle to me.’’ The only 
epistle noted in the lists of new books and pamphlets which 
could possibly fit the case is the one just mentioned. 

* Verses in A New Miscellany by Swift and others (1734) show the 
esteem in which Fielding was held by Pope’s circle of friends. The lines 
are in obvious imitation of the Profund, and the association of the 
future novelist with Concanen, “J. M. S.”, etc., is of obvious significance 
—Fielding was to be damned as a Dunce. 

. .. when you rashly think 

No Rhymer can like Welsted sink, 

His merits balanced you shall find 
That Fielding leaves him far behind. 
Concanen, more aspiring bard 

Climbs downward, deeper by a yard. 
Smart Jimmy Moor with vigour drops; 


The rest pursue as thick as hops. 
* Charles Johnson, the hack tragedy-writer. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 185 


This quarrel with Fielding is from one point of view the 
most important of the Journal’s excursions into dramatic 
criticism. The list of the Journal's victims connected with 
the stage contains no other name of equal rank with Field- 
ing. Most of the theatrical and dramatic criticism in the paper 
is, as has been said before, valuable chiefly as illustrating cur- 
rent methods of criticism and the typical taste and points of 
view of the age. The Fielding material, however, has an addi- 
tional importance. It helps to make clear the process by which 
Fielding acquired that false reputation for youthful immo- 
rality so completely exploded by Mr. Cross. It was an easy 
step for the hostile critics to pass from the conception of an 
exuberant young playwright charged with writing immoral 
and even grossly obscene plays to a conception of him as one 
who was merely photographing the regular background of his 
own experience and picturing the life he himself led. How 
for instance would a contemporary reader interpret the re- 
mark about ruining as many young ladies as the Charitable 
Corporation or Beau Fielding? Clearly comment of the sort 
which appeared in the Journal played its part in building up 
for the dramatist and future novelist a picturesque but un- 
fortunate reputation which has been accepted by all his biog- 
raphers from Arthur Murphy down to the present day, when 
it has finally faded away under Mr. Cross’s careful scrutiny. 
At any rate The Covent Garden Tragedy, the most “‘objec- 
tionable’”’ of Fielding’s plays, is no more immoral or im- 
proper from a modern point of view than the usual Resto- 
ration comedy or the imitation of it which passed current in 
the 1730’s. The usual comedy, however, was “elegant” ; 
Fielding occasionally presented the same materials with a 
characteristic direct frankness and realism which were not, 
one must admit, “elegant.” 

The only other representative of the theater who suffered 
sustained attacks in the Journal, and whose name after two 
centuries is still remembered with much interest, was the 
ubiquitous Colley Cibber. Pope had of course treated Cibber 
with contempt before the Journal ever appeared, and he con- 


186 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


tinued to do so after its day, and until his own death, but 
there is little in the assaults on Cibber in its columns to estab- 
lish the impression that they were written or personally in- 
spired by Pope, as were those on Ralph, Moore-Smythe, and 
Concanen. 

Endowed with a faculty for making himself continually 
ridiculous whenever he abandoned the field where his genius 
lay, thick-skinned and insensitive, and yet of so much indi- 
viduality and character as to appear a unique figure, Cib- 
ber was excellent game for the Journal. In one guise or an- 
other he was continually before the public, and could usually 
be counted on, like that mountebank, Orator Henley, to do 
something to arrest attention. If he was not acting, he was 
writing another birthday or New Year’s ode in his function 
as poet laureate, or he was displaying his talents as a manager 
or playwright. There is to be found in the Journal some 
interesting criticism of Cibber’s acting from as unfavorable 
a point of view as possible, but it was with Cibber as poet 
and especially as poet laureate that the Journal delighted to 
deal. As a comedian at least he was too clearly an acknowl- 
edged success; but as a poet he could find few critics so 
uncritical as to approve his efforts. 

Of Cibber in his proper sphere as a comic actor, the Journal 
could find little to say. His success in certain parts, notably 
the fops of Restoration comedy, had become historic. For 
instance, in a controversy over the merits of a new actor, 
Stephens,?#* “Somebody” (number 253) begins with a grudg- 
ing admission of Cibber’s excellence “in a few comic parts,” 
but this was satisfactorily explained by his enemies as being 
not acting at all, but purely a presentation of his own natural 
character. Thus the anonymous writer of an epigram in 
number 47 asserts— 

’Tis no hard task the reason to assign 
Why fool and knave in C—’s action join. 


Full of himself, half way he never stops; 
His fops are villains, and his villains fops. 


a An amateur. See Genest, III, 456 f. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 187 


And another in number 211, in an epilogue to Terence’s 
Eunuch— 

Let C—r by his coxcombs gain applause; 

Live, as he acts, and be the thing he draws. 


The many various fops his writing apes 
Are but himself in just so many shapes. 


The same attitude is reflected in an epigram by Russel in 
number 73— 

To Kneller Dryden writes, Some bear the rule 

Thus thou sometimes art forced to draw a fool; 

But so his follies in thy posture sink 

The senseless idiot seems at least to think. 

But thou, Gisoni, with sincerer art 

Hast drawn the laureate in his noblest part. 

As in his New Year’s Ode, in thy design 

The thoughtless Fopling shines in every line. 


On the other hand, of Cibber venturing unwisely into the 
realm of tragedy, they could speak in more direct censure. 
“Somebody,” in the letter just noted, after admitting Cib- 
ber’s limited excellence, attacks him scathingly for his acting 
of tragic roles. Speaking of Colley’s interpretation of Rich- 
ard III, he says, 

. How does our laureate acquit himself ? When he makes love to Lady 
Ann, he looks like a pick-pocket with his shrugs and grimaces, that 
has more a design on her purse than her heart; and his utterance 
is in the same cast with his action. In Bosworth Field he appears no 
more like King Richard than King Richard was like Falstaff, he 


foams, struts, and bellows with the voice and cadence of a watch- 
man rather than a hero and a prince. 


And of his liberties with the text Somebody cites as an ex- 
ample the change of “Inspire us with the spleen of fiery 
dragons” to “Inspire us with the rage of angry lions.” Of 
his Iago, the writer goes on to say, “Our laureate when he is 
working up Othello to his ends, shrugs up his shoulders, 
shakes his noddle, and with a fawning motion in his hands 
drawls out these words, ‘Good name in man or woman,’ .. .” 
Anyone would, he says, see through him, and Othello must 
be supposed a stock or a fool, not to. This attack drew an 
indignant reply from “Outis”, who declares that Cibber “is 


188 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


allowed by all gentlemen of true judgment (and therefore 
Mr. Somebody is not one) to perform every character 
. which he represents, extremely well.” Then with 
the usual freedom of controversial manners he labels Some- 
body a “vile scribbler” who had obviously been hired for the 
purpose, and with the proceeds would “‘fill his belly, as empty 
as his head.’’*° 
It was in the field of poetry, however, that Cibber shone 
with a particular unconscious brilliance to the Journal’s com- 
plete satisfaction. There is a steady stream of humorous 
comment on his appointment as laureate, and the burlesque 
discussions of his occasional odes—especially those for the 
New Year—became a regular institution from the first. His 
poetical utterances were regarded from every angle—his lan- 
guage, meter, and rhyme were minutely dissected for humor- 
ous effect, and his allusions were challenged, as were even his 
grammar and spelling. His two most famous blunders (which 
were not committed in his function as poet laureate )—his 
spelling paraphonalia and his remark that one of the actresses 
of his company had in a certain role “outdone her usual out- 
doings’’—were worn threadbare; regular allusions to them 
may be counted on. For instance, in regard to the news that | 
Mrs. Oldfield’s performance of a new role was “surprising,” 
one of the editors remarks (number 10), “I would rather 
have expressed it in the words of our learned Mr. Cibber, 
Mrs. Oldfield has outdone her usual outdoings,”’ and in 
“Verses occasioned by Mr. C—t’s erecting a booth in Smith- 
field,” published in number 190, Maevius (Russel) says that 
there will shine the modern British Muses— 
® Bavius, in comment on this controversy, derided Outis’ letter and 
declared that as far as writing for half-crown dinners was concerned, 
Outis was more likely to do it than Somebody—moreover, Outis’ letter 
-was not worth a half crown. See also “The Modern Poets,” in the 
Journal 98 cited below. Note also Brewster, Aaron Hill, p. 126: “Cibber, 
under the pseudonym of Outis, had been expressing in the Grubstreet 
Journal a very favorable opinion of his own abilities.’ The Journal’s 
criticisms of Cibber’s acting were paralleled by Hill in the Prompter. In 
321 “Outis Junior” explains that “Outis” is not “Is out” as the Prompter 


had explained, but is the Greek for “Nobody,” i.e., the antagonist of 
“Somebody.” 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 189 


Adorned with all their grand Paraphonalia 
To celebrate our annual Bacchanalia. 


The “outdoings” and “‘paraphonalia” were indeed, two of 
the most familiar jokes of the period—practically all the lit- 
erary or dramatic satirists®® were bound to make use of them 
sooner or later. 

The Journal of course made as much capital as possible 
out of the scramble for the laureateship which followed upon 
the death of the incumbent, Eusden, in the autumn of 1730. 
In the campaign for the place, Cibber’s name does not seem 
to have been publicly discussed. His appointment came as 
something of a surprise, and it was only after the actual 
announcement of his selection in number 48 that the satire 
on him began. As one writer puts it (number 52) — 


But guessing who would have the luck 
To be the B— day fibber ; 

I thought of Dennis, Theobald, Duck, 
But never dreamt of Cibber. 


In number 49 the Journal reported in equivocal phrase his 
reception at court, agreeing “that he is a grand and conse- 
quently a famous comedian, and very comical author,” said it 
did not doubt “but that this new preferment will make him 
more justly celebrated than ever,” and inserted in following 
issues** numerous epigrams at the new laureate’s expense. 
By far the best of these is Pope’s famous squib — 


Tell if you can which did the worse 
Caligula or Gr—n’s Gr—ce 738 
That made a consul of a horse 
And this a laureate of an ass. 


*° Or even political. Note, for instance, Fog’s Journal, January 9, 1731— 
“We are informed that Keyber comes on pretty well in his spelling, 
and by the time he begins to read a little he will be initiated into the 
society of political authors . . . and as he has the happiness to be pro- 
vided with all the Paraphonalia of a Whig hackney it is everybody’s 
eee he will do his patron as much honor and service as the best of 
them.” 

paSee DO olw 525 53e 

8 Grafton’s Grace, The Duke of Grafton. 


190 THE GRUBSTREET JOURNAL 


which Maevius (Russel) capped with another question. Con- 
sidering the present state of society, the stage, and poetry, 
he asks— 


Who better than an ass with laurelled pride 
O’er authors, actors, audience can preside? 


Most of these epigrams are mediocre or worse, but one pos- 
sibly is clever enough to be reprinted — 


Court fools and poets once illustrious lived; 
With different titles graced distinct they shone; 
But both are now so scarce, ’tis well contrived 
To join a poet and a fool in one. 


The attacks on Cibber the laureate were regular as long as 
the Journal lived. It never failed to reprint his New Year’s 
and Birthday odes with a running comment of mock anno- 
tation and discussion, and with epigrams and numerous 
chance allusions.*® Reference to him was in all tones, ranging 
from derisive condescension to savage contempt, and all the 
devices of satire, burlesque, and parody were employed at 
one time or another. The writer of a letter (number 55) on 
his first ode remarks, “So unexpectedly raised to so high a 
dignity, so envied by all the wits, no wonder he has herein 


* For instance, in the usual notes on the New Year’s ode for 1733 
(162), it is suggested that in one place where the verse made nonsense, 
error must have crept in through the carelessness of an amanuensis or 
proofreader—a palpable hit at Bentley and his theories of Miltonic 
criticism. In this same issue appears a discussion of his allusion to the 
Muses as “Sicilian sisters,” to which the Journal became fond of referring. 
In 161 and 162 it is noted that Orator Henley has changed the subject of 
his quarrel with the Journal, and run off to defend Cibber and the phrase 
“Sicilian sisters.” A correspondent in 150 writes an anecdote of a poet 
named Choerilus of the time of Alexander, who sang that hero’s praises 
in odes and birthday songs, but so badly as to give offense. He was 
ordered a piece of gold for every good verse and a lash for every bad 
one, his final reward being three pieces of gold and three hundred lashes. 
In Hooker's Miscellany (202) the editor remarks by way of preface to 
one of Cibber’s birthday odes, ‘We shall observe that the said ode may 

‘be said to be better than some former ones of the same author, and has 
fewer faults; because it is shorter.” 

Russel (“M”) began his satirical attacks on the New Year’s Ode in 
number 2 with a criticism of Eusden’s ode for 1730. He begins, “It pre- 
sages no small happiness to our society to have the New Year opened 
before the most august assembly with this incomparable ode, composed 
by one* of our most worthy members. . . . *The Reverend Mr. Laurence 
Eusden, Poet Laureate.” The foot-note (*) appears only in the Memoirs. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 191 


outdone his usual outdoings.” In a letter (number 74) on 
“the Keybers”—a spelling to which the Journal among others 
was much given—is sung the poetical glory of both Colley 
and Theophilus ; and in Latin verses (with English transla- 
tion) the fact is deplored that the envious wits should deny 
poetical gifts to so great a comedian, and the prophecy is 
made that one day he shall hand on the laurel to his son 
“formose Theophile,” “by right hereditary, poet born.” One 
“John a Nokes” (number 104) says, 


Our laureat’s last ode so much exceeding his former in the unintelli- 
gible sublime, I have restored it to its true reading, after the 
Theobaldine manner, for the benefit of the public... . 


And for the which, when that as once it was 
Not to be so, but furthermore likewise,?° etc. 


. . . If you put the ode itself in a counter column you'll find the 
meaning of both exactly the same. 

In the same way, Bavius (number 202) applies Horace’s 
touchstone by reducing the last birthday ode to prose to see 
if the sublime language still shines forth, and declares that 
“upon changing the order of the words, they lose nothing of 
their loftiness.” In number 106 a letter from the Elysian 
Fields tells of Cibber’s declaring before Apollo his rights to 
the laurel. He is made to present his “works”—his plays— 
which Apollo rejects, the writer intimating by the way that 
most modern plays are kept in a library by the temple of 
Cloacina near the foot of Parnassus. Cibber is finally given 
a drink of Hippocrene to test his poetic quality, with dis- 
astrous effect. In number 209 the device of comparison 
also yields fruitful results. In a categorical examination of 
the physical and mental qualities and the careers of Cibber 
and “Mr. Carpenter, poet-laureate . . . and deputy bell-man 
of the city of Hereford,” it is pointed out for example that 
Mr. Carpenter is a shoemaker by trade, and Mr. Cibber a 
cobbler of Corneille’s and Moliére’s old shoes. The official of 
Hereford finally comes off best and it is concluded that he 


For other burlesques, see 106, a New Year’s Ode, not in “the Cib- 
berine style,’ but translated into English; and 312, “Tobacco, an Ode, 
in humble imitation of the manner of our excellent laureate, Colley Cib- 
ber, Esq., designed to be set to music.’ 


OZ THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


may be held the better man. A somewhat similar device is 
used in number 210, where the new year’s verses by the St. 
James bellman are reprinted in connection with Cibber’s ode 
for 1733, with the remark that they are equally the entertain- 
ment of the polite part of the town. Again in number 305, 
the Journal published a doggerel birthday ode with the auth- 
or’s note, “As the author of these verses is not the laureate, 
I hope they will escape censure. A private man, unpensioned, 
has, I think, a right to be spared upon such an occasion. It is 
enough for him to mean well, let the execution be ever so 
indifferent.” 

In quite another strain are the direct assaults which appear 
occasionally, as for instance in “The Modern Poets” (num- 
ber 98), where he is taken to task for his attempts to imitate 
Congreve and to write odes and pastorals, as well as to play 
tragic parts, and in number 245 where Russel speaks of— 

Thy crazy muse, unfit for praise or satire, 


and adjures him— 


Be not so lavish of discordant rime 

Nor claim our scorn before the proper time. 
To dullness and contempt thy title clear 
By odes stands well asserted twice a year. 


Still another (number 213) speaks of his range between 
high sounding and grovelling nonsense, and tells him— 
... thy excellence 

Consists in darkness. Then go on, and spread 

Darkness around thee each revolving’ year. 

Let others boast of perspicuity, 

Thine is the praise to be completely dark. 

Cimmerian darkness was a proverb once; 

Cibberian darkness is a proverb now. 


The same idea appears (numbers 150, 151) in connection 
with a letter censuring Cibber’s impiety in beginning one of 
his odes “Let there be light,’ which drew forth the com- 
parison with a puppet show in which the master cried “Let 
there be light” and—‘‘Punch enters with a farthing candle.” 
Appended is the commentary : 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 193 


Let there be light, th’ Almighty said. 
A blazing glory shines 

And o’er the universe was spread 
Except on C—tr’s lines. 


Ner did the more private and less professional activities 
of the laureate escape the Journal’s notice. It reprints (num- 
ber 181), for example, verses on his being expelled from 
the House of Lords, describing his affected condescension 
there and advising him if he wished revenge to avoid satires 
and to frighten the Lords with his odes. When he announced 
his intention of leaving the stage, the Journal remarked 
(number 170), “It is below the dignity of a poet laureate to 
continue an actor,” and it also commented (number 115) on 
his ‘usual eloquence”’ when he spoke at a stockholders’ meet- 
ing of the South-Sea Company, in which “his stock is large.”’ 

Its hostility moreover extended undiminished to his son, 
who seems to have been regarded as a smaller and more 
absurd edition of his father.*4 The Journal's contempt for 
Theophilus Cibber is illustrated by its description (number 
121) of the cast of “A Lapland Entertainment” at Drury 
Lane, in which the parts were taken :—“The Bear by Father 
K-b-r, The Monkey by his son, bare-faced, the stag by ditto 
with a most illustrious frontispiece.’ All the cast “out-did 
their usual out-doings.”’ When Theophilus ventured his play, 
The Lover, the Journal was prepared to believe the worst of 
it. It reprinted (number 54) a letter of his to the Daily Post, 
dated January 8, 1731, explaining that the play was entirely 
his, that his father had had nothing to do with it, that al- 
though he had “some tolerable opinion” of it, his hopes 
rested chiefly on the indulgence of the town. Upon all this, 
the Journal remarked, clearly in Russel’s style, 

“For instance in an “Ode to the Poet Laureate” by Maevius, (doubt- 
less Russel) in 203, ridiculing all his activities, appears the Recitativo— 
With equal might our laureate and his son 
Through town and court their glorious course have run. 
Far as the sire his borrowed scenes extends 
The sire-like son his face and stature lends, 


And the same jokes th’ industrious bard compiles 
Our player repeats to raise our grins and smiles. 


194 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


I fear this young gentleman has too much timorousness, piety and 
modesty to succeed in this degenerate age. Fearing lest the world 
should impute some part of this play to his father he declares him 
entirely unaccountable for any one good as well as bad or indiffer- 
ent line in it. As his own opinion of it is only tolerable to himself, 
it may possibly prove intolerable to others, but let the appearance on 
the stage by means of false light be what it will, the light of an 
author of a moderate (indifferent) new play can be but darkness. 


Of the first night, the Journal (number 55) said, “This 
evening Mr. Theob. [sic] Cibber’s play called The Lover 
was acted which proved a tragi-comedy, both in itself and in 
the consequences, it occasioning the drawing of blood in the 
pit. The success was so dubious that it was uncertain whether 
the hisses or the claps were more numerous. The epilogue was 
received with universal applause, either because it was the 
conclusion, or because of the truths told him in it by his 
wife.’’*? Upon the news in the Daily Courant that the play 
was attended by “great applause” the Journal tartly remarked 
the next week, “Applause is here taken in a literal sense for 
clapping of hands, but intermixed with almost continual 
hisses and a great variety of other noises.” 

Some time later, during the quarrel between the actors 
and the patentees at Drury Lane,** a correspondent ‘“Mus- 
aeus” holds Theophilus, whom he calls “the Ancient” or 
“Pistol,”’ responsible for the trouble. He concludes, “Upon 
the whole, I can discern no other motive for this rebellion, 
but that Theophilus Cibber, Comedian, had resolved to be 
the Lucifer of the stage; and I don’t understand why he has 
not so much title to claim the laurel when his father dies, as 
to succeed to the management while he is living.”** The 

“<The Epilogue, spoken by the author and his wife.” The lines re- 
ferred to are as follows— 
Now I suppose you'll find your work is done; 
Did not I say—you were your father’s son? 
Be what it might you play, the town would game it, 
That your bare name were half a cause to damn it. 
Experience to your cost will show you now, 
Who wears the wiser head—your wife or you. 
“8 Ror a brief summary of this quarrel, see Brewster, Aaron Hill, 118. 


“For other allusions to Theophilus Cibber, see 132, 162, 164, 180, 186. 
For the letter by Musaeus, see 187. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 195 


Journal, however, does not seem to have felt the same ani- 
mosity toward Theophilus’ wife, Miss Arne, sister of 
Thomas Arne. In verses on the occasion of their marriage, 
dated April 30, 1730, but not published until May, 1734 
(number 228), the usual ridicule is meted out to Theo- 
philus, but she is given credit for “her beauty, her fortune, 
her sweet little voice,” and in general is treated with benevo- 
lence.*° Moreover, in a dispute which arose late in 1736 when 
the manager assigned the part of Polly in The Beggar's 
Opera to Mrs. Cibber, although it was one of Kitty Clive’s 
great successes, the Journal seems rather to sympathize with 
Mrs. Cibber. It even went so far as to allow space for a 
letter actually signed Theophilus Cibber wherein that gentle- 
man pointed out that the dispute was entirely between Mrs. 
Clive and the manager, and that Mrs. Cibber was not impli- 
cated in it. He added further that she was fully conscious of 
her youth and inexperience and never pretended to rival Mrs. 
Chye.-* 

The thrusts of the Journal at the laureate and his son, 
were, as has been noted before, more or less in the fashion. 
Cibber was generally regarded with more or less good- 
natured contempt, allowance first being made for his ability 
as an actor, and his son seems to have been thought of as one 
who aped his father, and had inherited the latter’s weak- 
nesses without a great share of his ability. Both were cred- 
ited especially with vanity and extreme effrontery. Theo- 
philus apparently could be goaded into indignant and noisy 
replies to the sallies of their enemies, but the more seasoned 
Colley seems to have accepted all taunts with calm and placid 
indifference. Indeed, he says himself, “After near twenty 
years having been libelled by our daily paper scribblers, I 
never was so hurt as to give them one single answer.’’** 

* See also 321, for “To Mrs. Cibber, An Ode”—on seeing her as 
Indiana in The Conscious Lovers. 

*“ For this quarrel, see numbers 361-368. 

“ See Cibber’s Apology, edited by R. W. Lowe (2 vols. London, 1889), 
I, 44, n. 1. The complacent vanity of his disposition displays itself in his 


remarks on Pope’s enmity toward him. “When I therefore find my name 
at length in the satyrical works of our most celebrated living author, I 


196 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


The attacks on Fielding and the Cibbers are perhaps the 
most interesting and important of the Journal's bickerings 
with theatrical celebrities. There was another campaign, 
however, which the paper engaged in with equal vigor and 
gusto, and in which its personal interest was even more in- 
tense, its squabble with the Prompter over William Popple’s 
comedy, The Double Deceit. The personal animosity between 
the Journal and the Prompter had been rendered unusually 
bitter by their long continued controversy over Matthew 
Tindall’s will, and “The Philosopher’s Prayer,” so that when 
occasion offered a new bone of contention, both parties 
seized it with a fierceness which would otherwise demand 
explanation. 

Popple had had, it would seem, rather unfortunate ambi- 
tions as a playwright. In 1734 he had had produced a piece 
called The Lady's Revenge,*® which expired after dragging 
out a short but weary life of four nights. The author in his 
preface explained that partisan and unfair tactics had hurt 
the play, but insisted that it had not failed but had been 
withdrawn for fear of trouble with a hostile claque. This 


never look on those lines as malice meant to me (for he knows I never 
provoked it) but profit to himself: One of his points must be to have 
many readers. He considers that my face and name are more known 
than those of many thousands of more consequence in the kingdom. 
That therefore, right or wrong, a lick at the laureat will always be a 
sure bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little readers. .. . But as a 
little bad poetry is the greatest crime he lays to my charge, I am willing 
to subscribe to his opinion of it.’ The same attitude is to be seen in 
verses from the Daily Journal, March 26, 1736, “Epigram on the writers 
of the Grubstreet Journal”— 

Of old when the Grubs attacked Colley Cibber 

As player, as bard, as odaic wine bibber, 

To a friend that advised him to answer their malice 

And check by reply their extravagant sallies, 

No, no, quoth the laureat, with a smile of much glee, 

They write for a dinner, which they shan’t get from me. 
To which the Journal replied in 327— 

Since the Laureat, quoth Dactyl, is resolute bent 

Not to answer our malice, that we may keep Lent, 

Let him fling up the Bays and return to the stage 

And try as an actor to charm the dull age. 

For if he writes on—o’er a glass with good cheer 

We shall feast on his odes, I am sure, twice a year. 

* The Lady’s Revenge, or The Rover Reclaimed. A Comedy (London, 

1734). The prologue and epilogue were both by Aaron Hill. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 197 


feeble apology of Popple’s in his preface met with vigorous 
analysis in the Journal. “‘Atticus” (number 215) denied point 
blank Popple’s assertion that the play had been damned by a 
cabal, and declared that the bulk of the audience had been 
sympathetic until they discovered that the play was poor. He 
then undertook to disprove categorically Popple’s statements 
that the audiences of the second, third, and fourth nights were 
in general favorable, and even went so far as to say that 
on the last night the actor Quin quieted the audience only by 
promising that the play would not be repeated. Popple’s side 
was taken by two of his friends, of whom one, ““Terentianus,”’ 
answers Atticus unconvincingly (number 216), and the 
other, “Candidus,” attempts (number 218) a formal critique 
of the play, discussing the unities, consistency of character, 
and so forth, a defense which Bavius analyzes point by point. 
That the controversy might have run on indefinitely is indi- 
cated by Bavius’ explanation (number 221) that letters re- 
ceived could not always be published because of lack of space. 
In addition to those already printed concerning The Lady’s 
Revenge, the editors had received a long defence by Phila- 
lethes*® and a longer letter in ridicule by Drawcansir. But 
as the play had no success and was of little interest, the editor 
was told, according to Bavius, to shut off the correspond- 
ence. Some time later, Atticus had sent in a second letter, and 
“Baviophilus” a criticism of Bavius’ answer to ‘““Candidus’”’ 
in number 218. This letter was not published, but Bavius did 
answer some of its contentions. Baviophilus, however, in 
spite of his name, returned to the charge with such an abusive 
letter that Bavius could not let it pass. Accordingly, in num- 
ber 224 he announced the receipt of Baviophilus’ second let- 
ter, and printed it without comment.°° The style of this letter 
is indicated by the following extract : 


Exert all the wit you and your fraternity are masters of, to expose 
the attempt of a gentleman who had a mind to try his genius in the 


* Possibly Fielding. He had used this pseudonym. 

© The particular point on which they were at odds was whether “the 
man of pleasure” in the play, who repents at the end and marries the 
heroine, is sufficiently repentant. 


198 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


dramatic way. ... Be advised in time, and let not your vanity 
make you imagine nobody has any sense but yourself or that a play 
must be bad because you write against it. 


He further insists that Bavius finds fault for its own sake, 
wilfully mistakes the sense of passages, and gives false turns 
to them. 

The Journal in this campaign had indeed been definitely 
hostile to Popple, and it is not surprising to find the quarrel 
renewed when he came out with another play, The Double 
Deceit,® a year and a half later. This second phase of the 
quarrel had, however, additional motivation. The chief point 
at issue was Popple’s plagiarism from James Miller’s com- 
edy, The Man of Taste, of the dramatic device of having two 
footmen appear as their masters. Since the quarrel over The 
Lady's Revenge, Popple had become one of the editors of 
the Prompter, which in its violent squabble with the Journal 
over Eustace Budgell and Tindall had shown itself a most 
outspoken enemy ; moreover Miller, it is supposed, had taken 
Russel’s place as chief editor of the Journal, when the latter 
resigned at the end of 1735. It is not surprising then, that the 
statements on both sides were extremely warm, and that they 
soon developed into personalities and recrimination. 

The quarrel seems to have got well under way privately, 
for the first utterance in the Journal, which appeared rather 
significantly on the day The Double Deceit was to be given a 
second trial, speaks of it as though it were well established. 
The author of the letter, who calls himself ‘‘Neitherside,”®” 
explains that while he does not consider The Man of Taste a 
good play, he thinks The Double Deceit a worse. Moreover, 
he says, Popple’s play was thought to have been produced 
before The Man of Taste merely to forestall a charge of 
- plagiarism, and now after a lapse of time is to be presented 
again. The device in question, which after all went back to 

5° The Double Deceit, or a Cure for Jealousy. A Comedy. By William 
Popple, Esq. (London, 1736)—Prologue by Aaron Hill. 

He says, “I am neither an enemy to Mr. P—le nor a friend to Mr. 


M—r: I know neither of them but by their writings ; and these lines 
entirely flow from my love to justice and impartiality.” See 322. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 199 


Moliére, was said by Popple’s adherents to have been stolen 
from The Double Deceit for The Man of Taste, notwith- 
standing that Miller’s play, though produced later, had been 
put into rehearsal first. In addition Mr. Popple had done 
everything he could to injure Mr. Miller, yet in spite of all 
efforts The Double Deceit had been so poorly received—it 
took only £30 the first night and £5 the second—that it was 
withdrawn. Neitherside also taunts Popple with his earlier 
absurd excuses for the failure of The Lady's Revenge. 

This letter, of course, belies its author’s claim of im- 
partiality in its obvious espousal of Miller’s cause. The 
next week Neitherside published another letter in the Jour- 
nal to the effect that he had attended a performance of The 
Double Deceit and had seen it receive the fate it deserved. 
He then quotes entire a handbill given out to each spectator : 
Whereas the writer of the Grubstreet Journal has printed a letter in 
his paper of this day vilely misrepresenting Mr. P—le in every light 
in which he considers him, and tending manifestly to injure him 
in his character both as a gentleman and an author, and whereas it 
is evident that the publishing of that letter was deferred to this day 
(it being dated the 17th inst.)53 in order and with a design mali- 
ciously to create a disturbance at the playhouse and prepossess the 
audience against The Double Deceit to the very great prejudice of 
the author, these are to desire such of the audience as may have 
read the aforesaid letter not to give any credit to the allegations 


therein contained till they shall have seen Mr. P—le’s justification, 
which he will print with all convenient speed.># 


Neitherside then declares that he is a bona fide correspondent 
and not “the writer of the Grubstreet Journal,” that his 
charges had been against Popple only as an author (which 
was hardly true), and that the letter, which was dated the 
seventeenth, could not have been published before the twenty- 
sixth,°® and for various other reasons could not possibly 
have been written especially to appear at a critical moment 

* Number 322 was published February 26. According to its date the 
letter might have appeared on February 19, in 321. 

“There is also a note in which Popple denies having charged the 
gentlemen from the Inns of Court with having caused the failure of 
The Lady’s Revenge. 


© Still the Journal was able on occasion to print articles received the 
day before publication. 


200 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


on the day The Double Deceit was to be acted. He declares 
that his letter had been called forth not by Popple’s medi- 
ocrity as an author, but only by his puffing of his play before- 
hand—“he might have been annually damned without any 
animadversions from me’’—and asks how his letters could 
have caused the play to fail. In this same issue is reprinted 
from the Post the news item that The Double Deceit was 
acted before a splendid audience including members of the 


royal family, but that the author, “perceiving ...a de- 
termined resolution [on the part of certain persons] to breed 
a disturbance . . . occasioned . . . from an invidious letter 


inserted in Thursday’s Grubstreet Journal,’ chose to with- 
draw the play rather than gratify them. This feeble defense 
got its quietus in the comment : “Mr. Conundrum conjectures 
that the true reason of this gentleman’s withdrawing his play 
was that the audience would not withdraw till another play 
was given out for the next night.”’ 

The Prompter on its side had been puffing The Double 
Deceit, answering the Journal’s charges against the play, 
and disparaging The Man of Taste.°® As usual, however, 
its remarks ran off onto the subject of the Journal’s manners 
and even such an irrelevant matter as its origin. The 
Prompter intimated that Neitherside was Miller himself,°? 
a suspicion which met an explicit denial in the Journal's 
statement (number 323) that the gentleman suspected had 
no hand in the quarrel, knew nothing of it, and had never 
written a syllable in defense of his own play. The Prompter’s 
allegations are then made the occasion for a disquisition on 

% See the Prompter, 137. An advertisement of this issue in the Daily 
Journal, February 28, promised “a full answer to that insolent, scurrilous, 
false, and malicious letter signed Neitherside in the last Grubstreet 
Journal wrote with a design to injure a gentleman both in his public and 
private character. Its author is supposed to be a clergyman who instead 
of employing his time in works suitable to the sanctity of his profession 
has already misspent it in writing one damned play and two vile trans- 
lations from Moliere, and is now making Much Ado About Nothing, on 
which occasion, ’tis hoped something will be done with somebody.” This 
is clearly an allusion to Miller; his ecclesiastical superiors and his ene- 
mies held his comedies against him. 


™ See the Prompter, 134, for a discussion of The Man of Taste; and 
for other points, 137 and 144. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 201 


its taste in general—its habit of puffing pieces which failed 
miserably and then damning the taste of the town. It is, in 
fact, charged with always missing the mark. For instance, 
The Man of Taste, regarded with disfavor by the Prompter, 
ran thirty nights at first and later seven or eight more,— 
“this Mr. Prompter, sadly remembering the dismal catastro- 
phe of Athelwold,** could never forgive.” 

At this point the quarrel becomes a purely personal affair. 
In the London Daily Post for March 5, Popple, signing 
himself ‘““The Author of the Double Deceit,” denied Neither- 
side’s assertion that he had attempted to injure Miller, de- 
claring that when The Man of Taste was acted he did not 
even know who the author was, and also denying (quite 
correctly) that in his preface to The Lady's Revenge he had 
charged the Templars with maliciously damning it. This, 
apparently the letter Popple had promised in his handbill, 
was cleverly but maliciously dissected in the Journal, which 
inserted in the issue last mentioned (number 324, March 11) 
a statement over the signature “J. H.,”— that is John Hug- 
gonson, at this time the Journal’s bookseller : “The author of 
The Double Deceit (in his letter in the London Daily Post 
of March 5) talks much about, and seems to value himself 
highly on his character as a gentleman, and among other 
thing says, ‘Mr. Neitherside in his first letter asserts two 
facts of me which in Tuesday’s Prompter were proved to 
be false. Upon my applying to the printer of the Grubstreet 
he told me they should be retracted, which I expected to see 
in this day’s paper.’ To which I answer: That I always 
thought speaking, writing, or publishing of truth had been 
one grand characteristic of a complete gentleman, but the 
author of The Double Deceit (in causing these words [he 
told me they should be retracted] to be printed in a public 
paper) has published an untruth or falsehood ; and therefore 
in my opinion is no complete gentleman. J. H.” The clear 


= By Aaron Hill (1731). According to Biographia Dramatica, this was 
his favorite tragedy. It was acted at Drury Lane for three nights. He had 
tried the same subject in another play, also a failure, some twenty years 
earlier. 


202 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


intention of this letter was to turn the quarrel into the chan- 
nels of a personal wrangle by irritating Popple into further 
declarations. The device was successful, for in the London 
Daily Post for March 15 “W. P.” begs leave, Neitherside 
not having deigned to answer his letter of the fifth, “to say 
a word or two to the insolent advertisement of the printer in 
yesterday’s paper on that subject.’’ He then goes on to con- 
tradict J. H.’s denial that he had promised retraction, re- 
marks on Quakers’ affirmations (Huggonson was a Quaker ) 
and threatens—‘if he takes the liberty to sport any more 
with my character ... I shall. . . resent it impanomer 
manner.” 

The next week’s issue of the Journal printed and answered 
a request “‘to give over pestering your readers with disputes 
about a damned play and a damned prayer.” In their answer 
the editors admitted that they did not think it wise to write 
criticisms of “damned plays,” and especially of the two last. 
They added that the author of one (Miller, of course) did 
not approve the puffs his play received before it was acted 
and was now resolved not to defend it. As for the other, 
criticism of it would be as little regarded as the author’s 
attempt to vindicate it.°® This Journal also contains another 
provocative note from J. H. to W. P. on the subject of “a 
complete Gentleman’ and a challenge to a duel, and still 
another appeared the next week (number 326) in a long 
demonstration that W. P. was “NO GENTLEMAN.” This 
statement is undisguised ragging—for instance it proves 
Popple a Quibbler and a Blunderer. Furthermore it denies 
again that Popple had been promised any retraction, and says 
that he had merely been told that if what he said were true 
he had been injured, and that if he would send in a statement 
- of such injury either the printer or authors of the Journal 
would do anything proper. Huggonson asserts, however, 
that Popple had been more anxious to learn the identity of 


® To this letter is appended the notice of Hill’s statement that he had 
had nothing to do with the letters in the Prompter on “The Philosopher’s 
Prayer” and the theatrical quarrel, and disapproved of their scurrility. 
See ante, p. 155. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 203 


Neitherside than to secure a retraction; and says he has 
heard that Popple is about to invoke the aid of the law. 
These hints failed to draw further quarrelsome rejoinders 
from Popple, although they were repeated in number 327,°° 
and again, after a silence of six weeks, in numbers 333-336, 
apparently with the idea that with some prodding Popple 
could be drawn once more. In the first of these issues the 
whole affair was summarized and it was announced that the 
reasons Mr. P—le had assigned for his silence would be 
examined the next week. The promised analysis proved to 
be contemptuous remarks upon a fable of the affair, which 
had appeared two months earlier in the Prompter for March 
23. The story was of a school boy who, after he had thrown 
one of his mates in fair fight, had been besquirted with dirty 
water by his fallen enemy and thereupon ran off saying he 
was not afraid to be wet, but was ashamed to be dirty. The 
Journal, having paid its respects to this analogue, went on 
to imply that Popple had written the letters in defense of 
The Double Deceit to himself as editor, ‘one to acknowledge 
the justice he was willing to do himself” and “the other to 
restrain himself” from publishing any more. The Journal 
also took up (numbers 335-336) old points that had been 
made earlier, exposed errors in some of Popple’s myth- 
ological allusions, and “odd peculiarities” in his style and 
grammar, waxed sarcastic over his suggestion that the edi- 
tors of the Journal ought to act like scholars and clergy- 
men, when he himself was an attacker of all believing clergy- 
men, contradicted an inference that Huggonson had not 
written the “J. H.” letters himself, mocked his magnanimous 
decision to drop the controversy, and finally, in reference to 
the Prompter’s theory that the Journal had sprung from 
Pope’s design for ““Works of the Unlearned,” insisted, “This 
design was not in the least known to those who set up our 
Paper ; nor was the Letter published till near six years after 
“Jn a letter from J. H. contrasting with Popple’s behavior the “civil, 


gentleman-manner” of another young man who had been to him on the 
same sort of errand. 


204 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the beginning of our Journal.”*! These delayed shots failed 
to revive a contention which had had all the publicity it de- 
served and more. Popple did not reply and the Journal, 
deciding, it would seem, that there was nothing more to be 
made of the matter, also allowed it to drop. 

During this controversy, the Journal also came into col- 
lision with the Prompter, or more properly with Aaron Hill, 
on another point, although with much less violence and per- 
sonal animosity. Hill had evolved a theory of acting which 
he explained at length in the preface to Zara. He believed 
that the only necessity for good acting was natural genius, 
which should be manifest at once, without training. He was 
tired of the affectations of acting which “made tragedy 
forbidding and horrible,” but was, he says, 
despairing to see a correction of this folly when I found myself un- 
expectedly re-animated by the war which The Prompter has pro- 
claimed and is now weekly waging against the ranters and whiners 


of the theatre, after having undertaken to reduce the actor’s lost art 
into principles. 


He announces that his only motive in presenting Zara is to 
test this theory, but somewhat illogically takes it for granted 
that he is correct, and that a failure of Zara would indicate 
only a general lack of taste on the part of the audience. The 
test did result in failure. Mrs. Cibber, who was making her 
first essay of a tragic role and who had been carefully 
coached by Hill himself, but who was after all a professional 
actress, made a brilliant success. On the other hand, Hill’s 
nephew, Charles Hill, an amateur, who was cast for the part 
of Osman, failed totally, and according to a later account in 
the Journal (number 350) was “hissed off the stage.’’® 

* A pretense or assumption that Pope himself had nothing to do with 
founding the Journal, and that his letters and ideas in general would be 
unknown to the founders until they appeared in print. The letter referred 
to was an old one to Gay. See ante. 

® The training of actors was the subject of two letters to the Journal. 
An anonymous writer in 277 suggests that steps be taken to raise the 
actor’s profession to a level with the others. He declares that the require- 
ments as regards appearance, education, manners, and so forth, are so 


great that men of breeding and family but small fortune should be thus 
encouraged to enter it. Some such idea seems also to have been in the 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 205 


This project of Hill’s for training up amateur actors is 
dubbed by a sarcastic writer, ““Meanwell” in number 326, a 
piece of impudence, and Hill himself is designated an “extra- 
ordinary Gentleman.” According to Meanwell, the appear- 
ance of an amateur on the public stage is, more than any- 
thing else, a sign of vanity and ostentation. He approves of 
boys acting at school to gain assurance and poise, but he 
has no desire to see young gentlemen strutting about on the 
public stage. The typical sequence of events in such a case, 
he says, is for a stage-struck amateur to give private per- 
formances before his friends, to feed upon their encourage- 
ment, then to appear in public with great disaster, which is 
laid to envy and ignorance, and finally to write fables in- 
sinuating that he himself is a horse, the other actors mules, 
and the pit “a confederate tribe of asses.’ This letter, like 
the earlier one concerning Popple, resulted in a personal visit 
to Huggonson, the printer, by Charles Hill, the outcome of 
which is indicated in a note the next week: 

Inasmuch as I believe C..H. (who, as himself supposed seemed to 
be the person aimed at in Meanwell’s letter in our last journal and 
as I apprehend, vindicated in the following) was with me to ask 
such like questions as W. P. had asked me some time before; and 
seeing C. H. (on my making him such like answers as I had made 
to W. P.) seemed to be pretty well satisfied, and parted with me ina 
civil gentleman-like manner, I have prevailed with our Society (who 
haye been always ready to do justice) to order the following letter 
to be inserted this week, tho it came rather too late, J. H. 

The letter here referred to is a defense by “J. English” of 
the acting of the young gentleman who took the part of 
Osman in Zara. At least the appearance of impartiality is 
lent by some adverse criticism. The writer says, for instance, 


mind of the writer in 184, who advances proposals for a new theatrical 
college on a vacated site in the Strand. His plans included a central 
theatre and two wings, one for men’s apartments and one for women’s. 
Immorality was to be punished by expulsion, and no student was to be 
admitted without “a genteel and liberal education.” The head of the 
school was to be a gentleman of the highest attainments, capable of 
directing the education of young actors, devising scenery, selecting plays, 
and so on, and the officers might quite happily (and in this he is serious) 
be supplied from the decayed gentry! Its proponent admits that this 
scheme is a very grand one, to be undertaken only with the patronage of 
the throne. 


206 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


that he at first gave the impression of conceit, but concludes 
that he showed variety of manner and gave “‘a just idea of 
the character.’”’ With this conciliatory criticism, the dis- 
cussion of amateur acting was allowed to drop. 

Altogether, there is in the Journal surprisingly little criti- 
cism of new plays. Aside from Fielding’s plays and Popple’s, 
which became the subjects of extended quarrels, the new 
pieces which the Journal bothered to discuss from any point 
of view can almost be numbered on the fingers of one hand. 
And moreover, among these there are not more than two or 
three instances of anything approaching a review. More often 
than not the comment turns at once, or almost at once, to 
personal matters or to some subject for which the play itself 
is merely a stalking horse. Obviously the editors had no 
intention of reviewing new plays as they were produced. 
Day by day contemporary playwrights were grinding out 
new grist for the theaters, but there was as yet no dramatic 
editor to evaluate their efforts and advise the public. Notice 
that a new play was on the boards was generally given in 
the daily papers and copied from them in the weeklies, and, 
unless the result was a riotous failure, the public was in- 
formed in stock formula that it “was acted with great ap- 
plause, before a large audience including many people of 
quality.” Almost without exception a personal animus of one 
sort or another can be traced in any of the Journal’s criti- 
cisms. It is also notable that the criticism is regularly un- 
favorable; even when the Journal undertook the cause of 
James Miller and his Man of Taste it found nothing good to 
say directly of the play itself. Occasionally, however, a pro- 
nouncement does seem to be colored by a definite contempt 
for the play as such, apart from the authorship, or the man- 
agement or the actors. For instance, early in the paper’s 
career (numbers 6 and 7), Russel exercised his powers of 
sarcasm to the full against Miller’s Humours of Oxford. 
He summarizes the action and declares that the play was 
intended to expose one of those seats of learning which 
breed up Parnassians in a classic tradition in distinction 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 207 


from those geniuses who are able to scorn such a training 
and distinguish themselves very early with some surprising 
composition. He analyzes the construction and after saying 
of the unities, ““ . .. the author has shown the greatness 
of his art in observing the two former, and that of his 
genius in neglecting the last,” shows that the comedy has 
the surprising architecture of two main plots and two sub- 
plots, and then in the same ironical vein cites characteristic 
detail of the author’s language and sentiments. It is evident 
that Miller was as yet an outsider; his membership in the 
Journal's approved coterie was still to come. The Humours 
of Oxford nevertheless seems to be treated on its merits, 
independent of its authorship or personal connections. 

On the other hand, in dealing with Sophonisba, a new 
play by James Thomson, toward whom Pope was friendly— 
and who was therefore a “Parnassian” and persona grata— 
the Journal avoids the play itself and attacks two pamphlets 
about it. In number 11, these pamphlets are advertised, one 
an unfavorable criticism and the other an answer to it, both 
published by the same printer. The Journal over Bavius’ 
signature®® also pronounced them to be by the same author— 
“Tim” Birch. Thomson himself is referred to as “‘probably a 
profest enemy of our Society’—the usual phrase for the 
elect—and the two pamphlets are made a pretext for attack- 
ing the newspaper puffs of plays, and asserting the Journal’s 
independence and contempt for all such devices. In this par- 
ticular case, the Journal was doubtless motivated chiefly by 
its hatred for Tim Birch, later to edit that “obscure” paper, 
the Weekly Register. Criticism of Thomson also affected the 
Journal’s attitude toward The Contrast,** a burlesque on 

® The next week, in number 12. 

* See 70. According to Biographia Dramatica it was by Benjamin and 
John Hoadley, and was never printed. The Contrast is also satirised by 
“Philo-Grubstreet” in 73... . “Nor need Grubstreet ever fear an enemy 
while there is an author of The Contrast to defend it. What honours 
ought you not to decree to perpetuate his memory who has made such 
bold attacks against those formidable enemies, Steele, Congreve, Rowe, 


and the immortal Shakespeare, not in the least fearing their wit, nor 
paying a decent regard to their Manes.” 


208 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the model of The Rehearsal. An ironical correspondent, 
“Salisbury Steeple”, announces his authorship of the play, 
since several other people who like himself had no hand in 
it are letting it pass as theirs. He prides himself on his un- 
common ability in exposing, not the bad but the good, and 
asserts that despite denials the play was intended as a satire 
on two or three dramatists, among them “‘that strenuous 
anti-Grubaean,” Thomson. An even clearer case of personal 
interest is furnished by the criticism of James Ralph’s 
comedy The Fashionable Lady. Ralph was of course one 
of the chief butts of Grubstreet satire during the paper’s 
early period when Pope was actively connected with it. 
Consequently its tone is not surprising. Preparation for an 
assault is to be found in number 14, in a comment on notice 
of its “successful production” : “This excellent play was pre- 
sented to the Society on Wednesday last, and referred to 
the consideration of Mr. Bavius.” Two weeks later came 
the results of that worthy’s consideration, in an article by 
Martyn headed “Oons, Mr. Drama, what d’ye mean by such 
stupid stuff as this? Let me be hanged if I have not been 
entertained a thousand times better by the Humours of 
Rustego and his man Terrible at Southwark Fair!’’®® Doubt- 
less Ralph, the Hoadleys, and Miller got fully as favorable 
criticism as their work deserved, but it is equally beyond 
doubt that that criticism was unfavorable because they lived 
outside the charmed circle. Miller indeed, having been able 
to creep within it, became sacrosanct. Just a year later (59) 
his manner had become “palpably Parnassian’”’ and in time 
he may possibly have assumed the mantle of Bavius himself. 

Another equally personal passage began in number 108 
in connection with The Modish Couple by Captain Charles 
_Bodens. In a discussion of modern writers which begins in 
generalities but soon develops into an attack on Bodens, the 
writer charges him with undertaking to write for the public 
though ‘without wit or humor, without genius or ca- 
pacity.” After a number of epigrams and little squibs, in 


* See ante, p. 68. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 209 


the course of which Bodens was called “a military author 
of a late damned dramatic performance” and ‘‘an oppressed 
brother,” the cudgels were taken up by ‘“Dramaticus,’’®® 
who was chiefly interested in contrasting his rejected master- 
piece with The Modish Couple, which had been acceptable 
to the managers but had nevertheless failed. Dramaticus 
complained especially that though several of Bodens’ char- 
acters, unlike his, were “unaccountable”, his play had been 
stigmatized as untheatrical. The Modish Couple, on the 
other hand, evidently was theatrical ; it had been “‘licked into 
the form it now bears, and had the last touches given it by 
a person in the management of the house, famous lately for 
several odes, in which he has shown as much poetry as judg- 
ment .. .’°? The situation here is obvious; Dramaticus is 
writing out of jealousy and resentment toward Cibber and 
Wilkes, also a manager. The extent to which he nursed his 
grudge is shown by the fact that in number 119, in a second 
letter, he defended his point of view in the first, and dis- 
coursed at length on the significance of the word “‘theatrical.”’ 
In fact the dictum “not theatrical’ rankled so deeply that, as 
has been noted, he was continually recurring to it in his 
numerous letters in the Fielding quarrel, and it became the 
subject of remarks in the Journal. In number 115, in a letter 
which sounds somewhat like Russel, but is signed C— J—n 
(Charles Johnson), that prolific writer of tragedies is made 
to say that he has written more than twenty theatrical pieces, 
(“tho neither sensible nor pretty’) and that Mr. W— 
(Wilkes, to whom Dramaticus had submitted his piece) 
“applies that word to the pieces of those authors who have 
the knack of wriggling themselves into his good graces.” 
To this, Russel (“M’’) added the sneering comment that 
“theatrical” might also mean containing parts in which 
actors might display to advantage their tricks, gestures and 

Tha wilZ, See wh 7s 

* Dramaticus also attacks Injured Innocence (by Fettiplace Bellers, 


according to Biographia Dramatica), which he says he heard was kept 
going only by the financial support of the author. 


210 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


grimaces. In number 129 too, ‘“‘Poeticus” offers Dramaticus 
a “Recantation Song” to sing to Wilkes. It ends— 


Then friends once more we'll be today; 
Act but my Un-theatric play. 


The same hostility toward the Cibbers led to the publica- 
tion in numbers 164, 165, and 167 of a series of critical 
articles by “Somebody.”’ Indeed, the author explains that he 
has no quarrel with the authors whose plays he is dissect- 
ing; he merely wishes to disclose the defects of the manage- 
ment of the Drury Lane, just as one might attack a manager 
for using dancing dogs, without being malevolent toward 
dogs. He begins by saying he had expected comments on the 
current plays by Dramaticus, especially since this year they 
“afford so much room for satire” but supposes the reason 
for his silence is contempt. He then takes up in succession 
The Boarding School Romps, Betty, or The Country Bump- 
kin, and Caelia, three of the Cibbers’ new offerings at Drury 
Lane. “‘Somebody’s”’ tone is anything but temperate. Of the 
first he sneeringly declares that its songs might have been 
written by a little Miss working her sampler, and its tunes 
by a parish clerk. He insinuates moreover that the piece had 
been stolen, like another by the same authors, The Devil to 
Pay, which had been taken from an old play, The Devil of a 
Wife. This latter, which had first appeared in three acts, 
was reduced by Theophilus Cibber to one, and had had in- 
serted in it four old songs in which the so-called authors 
had no hand. The Boarding School Romps likewise was 
merely an abstract of Tom Durfey’s Boarding School. He 
goes on to foretell similar thefts in the future and suggests 
as a typical possibility Etherege’s Man of Mode, or Sir 
Fopling Flutter, to be enlivened with a few songs and re- 
christened The Modish Man or The Fluttering Fop. The 
Cibbers, he says, deserve nothing more to manage than a 
puppet show, and he dubs the author of the two pieces 
“Fiddle Faddle Filch’, and his collaborator “Sly Boots”.%% 


® See Biographia Dramatica: The Devil to Pay was published as by 
Charles Coffey. He and one Mottley each undertook to work over one 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 211 


In his second article he takes up in the same manner Betty, 
or The Country Bumpkin, which had been kept on the stage 
seven or eight nights in spite of popular disapproval, and 
which the author had not presumed to print. He admits that 
the author had some ability as a musician and that the songs 
were pretty, but two of them he holds up to ridicule as 
nonsense. Are such performances, he asks, fit to attract the 
patronage of royalty and the great, or to train properly the 
youthful mind? Of Caelia, the subject of his third article, 
he found nothing better to say. The plot, which he outlines, 
had possibilities, but these were defeated by the author’s 
style, which failed to produce one single memorable speech, 
although Mrs. Cibber had made her part of the heroine re- 
markably pathetic. This leads to a discussion of poetic dic- 
tion, with specimens from Shakespeare and Lee, who were 
able to make ideas attractive and give them permanence. 
But, the writer interjects scornfully, the generality of dra- 
matic authors would no more understand what he says of 
taste than as if he wrote in Latin. Still he insists that Caelia 
was superior to the other plays criticized and enjoyed a 
greater success. Yet it was denied a second performance. 
Who “Somebody” was and what specific grievance he had 
against the Cibbers it is impossible to say. He was, however, 
a frequent correspondent, and his hostility toward the 
laureate and his son and all their concerns is patent. It was 
the obvious motive for this series of attacks on their latest 
productions. Moreover, he soon appears again as the cham- 
pion of Rich, manager of the rival house. In number 174 
“No-body”, apparently in retaliation for Somebody’s arti- 
cles, attacked Rich’s judgment in choosing plays, and his 


and one-half acts. T. Cibber then cut it to one act and added one song 
by his father and another by Rochester. It was successful and furnished 
Mrs. Clive with her first notable success——The Boarding School [sic] or 
The Sham Captain (1733) was taken by Coffey, from Durfey’s Love for 
Money and was a failure—Betty, or The Country Bumpkin. A Ballad 
Farce, by Henry Carey, was acted without success at Drury Lane in 1739 
(Genest records performances in December, 1732), and was not included 
among Carey’s works.—Caelia was by Charles Johnson, with an epilogue 
by ae It had no success. (Genest records a performance in Decem- 
er 


212 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


insistence on having them made over to suit his own peculiar 
ideas. His ability as a harlequin is allowed but his taste and 
learning denied, and in addition he is charged with pirating 
a play belonging to a friend of the writer. No-body was 
probably the Outis of some three years later, who explained 
his pseudonym as being ow tis, or Nobody, and who is sup- 
posed to have been Colley Cibber himself.°® He received an 
answer from Somebody in number 177, in which the latter 
clears Rich altogether of the charge of piracy, answers ably 
the other indictments brought against him, and concludes 
with a comparison between Rich’s magnanimity as a man- 
ager and the meanness of the Cibbers at Drury Lane. For 
instance, No-body accuses Rich of rejecting a translation of 
Voltaire’s Zaire. In reply, Somebody explains that Rich had 
never been shown more than two or three scenes from the 
third act, passages which Somebody ascribes to a brother of 
Aaron Hill. He also explains away the charge that Rich had 
stolen a comedy, The Mock Lawyer, by saying that the play 
in question had been stolen from James Ralph, its author, 
and brought to Rich, who discovered the theft by accident. 
Rich happening to show the comedy to Fielding, the latter 
recognized it as Ralph’s. Hereupon Ralph is dragged into 
the quarrel, and asked to explain whether his part in the 
affair had been an innocent or guilty one. In number 178, 
Ralph objected (over his own signature) to the use of his 
name in this controversy, and declared that he had given the 
play to the person Somebody charged with stealing it.*° This 
drew an apology and retraction from Somebody in number 
179. Somebody’s third contribution to the Journal consisted 
in a series of letters (numbers 254 ff.) wherein he disputed 
with “Outis” over the talents of the Drurian actor Stephens 
- and incidentally of Colley himself. His position, then, as a 

" See ante, p. 188. 

* See Biographia Dramatica. The Mock Lawyer was by Edward Phil- 
lips. According to Somebody, Mr. P. (Phillips) and one C—mbe had each 
brought a farce to Rich, and he had commissioned them to work their 


two plays into one. Then doubts arising as to C—mbe’s authorship, he 
was dismissed and none of his material was used. 


DREARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 213 


bitter enemy of the Cibbers and Drury Lane, and on the 
other hand as a friend of Rich, is clear. Indeed one may 
guess at a fairly close connection with Cibber’s chief rival, 
for in the letter defending Rich he shows himself possessed 
of much intimate detail of Rich’s life. One need not go so 
far as No-body, who called him “a vile scribbler’ hired to 
attack, but he may very well have been a sort of unacknowl- 
edged but official champion of Rich and Covent Garden. It 
is also clear enough that he was in favor with the Journal, 
which continually allowed him space and supported his side 
editorially. This of course was to be expected in view of the 
paper’s inveterate and consistent hatred of Cibber. 

Doubtless it was much more interested in him for his hos- 
tility toward the Cibbers than for his friendship toward 
Rich. The Journal had little to do with Rich and mentioned 
him only rarely. On such occasions, however, it exhibits no 
particular love for him. For instance when he built his new 
theater it published in number 139 verses beginning: 


While Drurian actors, Rich, with envious eyes 
In Bow Street see th’ aspiring fabric rise— 


and continuing with praise of Rich, all his undertakings, 
and all his company, each of whom is mentioned by name. 
The editors headed these verses, however, “Published not as 
containing their sentiments, but those of the unknown author 
whom they are willing to oblige,” and admitted to number 
144 the distinctly unobliging verses in answer— 


In vain with glowing heart and smiling eyes 
Rich sees his theatre in Bow-street rise. 

In vain with expectation fills the town 

Whilst thou at random knock’st his actors down. 
Thy executing pen, dear Scribbler, sheathe; 
Already thou hast praised thy friends to death.™! 


“The only other allusion to Rich of any significance is a defence of 
him in 376, against an attack in the Daily Journal. It is said for him 
that the machinery he devised for his entertainments showed great genius 
and invention, that he used his great profits from The Beggar’s Opera to 
build a new and convenient theater, and that he revived many old plays. 
Some of the arguments here were answered in 378 by “Haberdasherus,” 
who was especially disturbed because Rich had raised prices for new 
entertainments. 


214 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


At any rate, Somebody’s bias is obvious enough. His 
criticism can no more be accepted as the utterance of disin- 
terested or virtuous indignation than can that of Dramaticus, 
or Bavius himself. Like them, he has an axe of his own to 
grind, and is at no great pains to conceal the fact. As one 
discovers again and again in all connections, it is impossible 
to find consistently disinterested criticism in the Journal. It 
was an avenue or channel for personalities, and the temper 
and manners of the time and the motives of the paper itself 
were such that arguments and discussions, even though 
marked by some dignity in their beginnings, speedily twisted 
themselves into personal diatribes. The inhabitants of Grub- 
street might be interested in abstract and general critical 
ideas, but they were much more concerned in justifying 
themselves, and in disclosing to the world the defects and 
flaws in the talents and characters of their opponents. In this 
latter field of endeavor they were especially zealous workers. 

The anti-Cibberian feeling of the Journal is apparent 
again in its stand in favor of the patentees of Drury Lane in 
their quarrel with the actors during 1733. The patents being 
held as private property and shifted about from one owner 
to another for sale, the actors grew restive, insisted that they 
were no better than “‘slaves”’, and started an insurrection to 
secure a hand in the management. In this they were led by 
Theophilus Cibber, a fact which must, in any case, have cost 
them the Journal's support. As a matter of fact, the letters 
and articles on this quarrel consist to a large extent of attacks 
on the younger Cibber, or “Pistol”. Their tone, while on the 
whole it shows a bias in favor of the patentees and their 
vested interests, is not distinctly hostile to the players, except 
in the case of Theophilus Cibber. 

The quarrel was well under way when the Journal began 
to give space to it in June, 1733 (number 180), although 
the attack on Theophilus Cibber a fortnight earlier,” in 
which he was indicted with great contempt for misdemeanors 


* See ante, p. 194, This letter attacked him for his lapses as manager of 
Drury Lane and as author of The Mock Officer, and for appropriating 
to himself the parts left vacant by the death of Wilkes. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 215 


as author, actor, and manager, may be taken as having some 
bearing on the more specific discussions later. Two long 
letters in number 180 present both sides of the case. The 
spokesman for the actors dignifies his party by declaring that 
the best playwrights have been actors, for instance, Shake- 
speare and Otway, and that actors have often been thought 
worthy of taking part in management, as when Steele joined 
with him as managers the actors, Booth, Wilkes, and Cibber. 
He denies the justice of a system which allows a group of 
individuals to buy a patent outright—presumably for profit 
—and with it virtually the actors. Such a system, he says, 
might do for negro slaves, but not for Englishmen. The 
tendency of such patentees will be to pay as low salaries as 
possible and to take for themselves all the profits of hard 
labor and genius, denying encouragement to merit and indus- 
try. “It seems to me unjust that the useless and unprofitable 
members of any society should feed upon the profits arising 
from the excellencies of all the rest’ —an eighteenth century 
pronouncement of a doctrine which is still “dangerously radi- 
cal” in its implications! On the other hand, ‘“‘Musaeus”, a 
defender of the patentees, while admitting that stage tyrants 
had existed and that authors and actors had been treated like 
slaves, asserted that the shifting about of the patent interests 
in the present case had been for purposes of peace and the 
redressing of grievances. The plan had been for two benign 
gentlemen to buy one half the patent, “‘yet one little creature, 
who was only deputy and representative of his father, was 
turbulent enough to balk their measures, thwart their designs, 
and with his single insolence counterbalance all the civility 
and decency in the opposite scale.’”’ Then, Musaeus continues, 
“to extinguish this meteor,” one of the patentees bought his 
father’s share and set the son down “in the same obscure 
place from whence he rose.’’*? This, it was thought, would set 
everything aright, but the same trouble-maker then stirred 
up dissension among the players by making them dissatisfied 


*8 Cibber’s reason for selling is said elsewhere to have been a desire to 
provide financially for his children. 


216 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


with their salaries, although the system of the theater re- 
mained unchanged from the one they were used to. His 
motive in this, Musaeus says, was the destruction of all prop- 
erty value in the patent share his father had just sold, and 
his suggested plan was for the players to set up in their own 
interest, taking the same salaries as before and dividing the 
profits at the end of the season. They were all to be managers, 
to judge plays and undertake all other responsibilities. “Like 
the drunken sailors in the play they are all to be viceroys, 
Pistol [T. Cibber] desired only to be viceroy over them.” 

Practically the whole of the next issue is devoted to the 
quarrel. One writer, claiming impartiality, and declining to 
dispute the wisdom or the rights of either side, is really sub- 
versive of the players’ cause. In humorous and ironic vein, 
he thinks it quite possible for the players to start a new 
theater of their own—with fifty new churches in London, 
why should there not be as many new theaters? A new 
theater would probably be put up in a fashionable district, 
but why not near the Pegasus, for the advantage of inter- 
course with the Grubstreet Society? As for the actors, all— 
except possibly Theophilus Cibber—were probably sincere 
and disinterested, and the actresses merely followed their 
lead. The writer reveals his contempt for the actors, how- 
ever, when he regards the situation from the point of view 
of the patentees. It would be quite possible, he thinks, for 
the actors to reap advantages from the suggested revolution. 
Heretofore very few decent people had become actors; now, 
with a fresh start, the patentees could recruit a new company 
from the university and the Inns of Court, where many knew 
more about the stage than they did of the law. Furthermore 
any charity school, he sneers, could furnish a dozen wenches 
of more decent education and character, and more health, 
beauty, youth, and genius than the common run of actresses ; 
and one season would doubtless qualify them all for the stage. 
An illustration of the case was offered by another writer, 
who contributed a passage from Vanbrugh’s Aesop, which, 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 217 


he said, offered a close parallel to the present situation.” 
According to the dialogue cited, players “always did and 
always will hate their masters, though they cannot support 
themselves without them.” Moreover, the dialogue makes the 
point that the players were dissatisfied for silly reasons, and 
that they were not thriving or working well together. On 
Aesop’s making this clear to them in a fable, they decide to 
make peace with the patentees. 

From time to time during the rest of 1733 the progress of 
the quarrel was reflected in letters to the Journal. Theo- 
philus Cibber had addressed a public letter’ to Highmore, 
one of the patentees, and Musaeus (number 187) undertook 
a categorical answer to the points made therein. He declared 
his purpose to be the humbling of Cibber; in fact, his letter 
opens: “There is one Theophilus Cibber, Comedian, who has 
lately thrust his person full into the face of the public, and 
taken much pains to put himself upon us for a person of 
importance.” Musaeus waxed especially sarcastic on Cibber’s 
contention that the actors were the only support of the the- 
ater, maintaining on the contrary that they were least of all 
fit to manage a theater, and also took occasion to illuminate 
the casuistry and the evasion in the actor’s letter. When the 
affair had attracted enough attention to be satirized at Covent 
Garden in The Stage Mutineers, a new correspondent, 
“Philo-Musus”’, in number 189 protested against the new 
farce as a personal attack and the paying of a grudge not 
only against Theophilus but his father as well, and asked 
what difference it made to the town in general, whether 
Cibber or Highmore won the battle. Still another, “Plain 
Dealer” (number 198), replied to an attack on the patentees 
in the Daily Post. He declared that Highmore had not bought 
part of the patent for someone else, and grew indignant 
over the reference in the Post to one of the patentees as “‘one 

“See Aesop, Part II, Scene I. Part II was first printed in quarto, 
1697. The British Museum has: Aesop, A Comedy. With the Addition of 
a Second Part. Written by Mr. Vanbrugh. The Hague, 1711. 


*A Letter from Theophilus Cibber, Comedian, to John Highmore, 
Esq. [1733]. 


218 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


John Ellys,” when that gentleman was highly respected, of 
good family, and a well known painter to boot. Moreover, 
the share sold to Ellys, according to Plain Dealer, had been 
offered first to Mills, one of the actors, and had been de- 
clined. Plain Dealer also refused to admit as an argument 
for the actors the fact that Giffard, an actor, was one of the 
managers of Goodman’s Fields, since the notable qualities of 
his character—modesty and economy—distinguished him 
from actors generally. The last significant allusion to the 
quarrel is in the unsigned letter (202), “Of the Use and 
Abuse of the Stage,”’ wherein it is suggested that both sides 
would have done better to expend their energy in raising the 
standards of the stage than in vilifying each other so long and 
exposing their own “artful tricks.” 

The friction between actors and patentees, and the attempts 
to escape established tyranny by the foundation of new the- 
aters, and so forth, are reflected in two letters published in 
the Journal a year and a half later. A bill*® having been 
introduced to limit the number of theaters, ““Modulus”’ writes 
(number 274) ironically that he deplores restraints on theater 
building, with the consequent closing of opportunity to archi- 
tects and masons, as also to the dissatisfied clerks, appren- 
tices and broken tradesmen who would fain become actors. 
He then adds more seriously that in case of such limitation, 

*° Apropos of laws regulating the theaters, an amusing burlesque 
petition of female dancers and actresses against a bill prohibiting plays 
in houses where liquor is sold, appears in 279:—“We, your humble 
petitioners do apprehend that it will be impossible for us to perform our 
parts with any spirit, if this clause should continue,’ and so forth. Also 
the punning epigram— 

Were drams to these denied, we soon should see 

That less dramatic would each drama be. 
Another correspondent (327, 328) presents a most remarkable project 
for taxing theater tickets and using the income for the redemption of 
seamen who had fallen into slavery among infidels and barbarians. The 
* writer discusses the present low state of the theaters, the general theory 
of sumptuary legislation, and the taxation of vice and pleasure. He esti- 
mates that £84,000 per annum is spent on the London theaters, and 
argues that a duty on such a luxury to be used in redeeming slaves, 
whose great sufferings in Morocco he details, would be more proper 


than some taxes already in force on such necessities as chairs, coals, 
and candles. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 219 


additional laws should be enacted protecting managers and 
actors against each other, fixing definite grades of actors 
with their salaries, safeguarding the rights of authors, and 
also assuring the town against the determination of managers 
to present unpopular plays, or refusal to give popular ones. 
Three numbers later another correspondent, anonymous, pro- 
poses a referee appointed by law to settle all disputes between 
managers and actors, with power to fine obstinacy on either 
part. 

In all these prolonged controversies the operation of per- 
sonal prejudice is only too apparent—Fielding, the Cibbers, 
and Popple were for various reasons despised or hated by 
the Journal. In Fielding’s case, a resentment toward his 
“immorality” was certainly a factor, the immorality of the 
stage being of course a perennial and fruitful subject for 
serious discussion and reforming zeal in all ages. Equally 
enduring is the hatred of the more serious part of the thea- 
trical world—the writers and purveyors of regular tragedy 
and comedy—for the merely entertaining—for the easy lure 
of spectacle and music, and for the potent charm of exotic 
and strange foreign novelties. The particular objects of these 
animosities in the eighteenth century were practically the 
same as at present—the opera, the spectacular entertainment 
with ballet, pantomime, and so forth, and the invading armies 
of foreign performers of all sorts. 

As before and since, even down to the present, the Italian 
opera was assailed for its inherent lack of dramatic power, 
but the chief fault found with it was the extravagant adula- 
tion and the “showers of gold’ bestowed upon the stars. 
Especially hateful to the freeborn Englishman was of course 
the male soprano. Frequently one finds sarcastic comment on 
the riches accumulated in England by the Italians, notably 
Farinelli. Typical and representative of all these are the 
verses in number 284 on Farinelli, of which the following 
are an excerpt— 


While Britain, destitute of aid, 
Weeps taxes and decaying trade, 


220 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Sees want approach with nimble pace 
And ruin stare her in the face, 
Charmed by the sweet Italian’s tongue 
In showers of gold she pays each song.77 


English chauvinism also resented bitterly the appearance on 
the London stage of French and Italian actors of other types. 
Thus “Patriophilus” in number 254 tears to shreds the work 
of a French company at the Haymarket. He saw L’Avare 
and thought it a very poor performance. He found fault with 
the costumes, considered the delivery monotonous and stilted, 
and declared that there were only two respectable actors in 
the company ; the rest seemed to have undertaken a business 
for which they were totally unprepared. In the silly entertain- 
ment which followed, the actors were so painted that their 
faces had the appearance of masks. He concluded that the 
company must be mere strollers imposing on the British pub- 
lic or that if they ever had acted in Paris it must have been 
in the lowest parts. 

Another letter in number 272, signed significantly “True 
Briton,” criticizes in much the same tone a French company 
at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The writer, after explaining himself 
as a country gentleman who regularly spent three months in 
London for the theaters, says that he found everyone prais- 
ing the French actor, M. Francisque, and so went to his bene- 
fit. He had nursed the hope, he says, that Francisque, by 
giving the best plays of Moliére, Racine, and others, would 
force English companies to reform, and purge the stage of 
entertainments, not even excepting The Beggar's Opera and 
Fielding’s burlesques and farces. Although play and acting 
were both poor, the theater was crowded. The next day, hap- 
pening to meet one of the company at a coffee house, he was 
told that they acted plays in London for which they would 
be driven from the stage at home; that Francisque could do 

™ A typical instance from another paper, Hooker's Miscellany (119)— 
“Tthere is] nothing now regarded but unmanly tweedle-dums and 
tweedle-dees, and the effeminate quavers of a wretched Eunuch’s quail 
pipe!—A glorious prospect this for our volatile neighbors! Who have 


no occasion to apprehend any more Blenheim’s or Ramillies from our 
quarter, while this infamous taste continues to engross us so entirely.” 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 221 


anything with the English, and condescended to suit their 
palates with buffoonery and drollery. The French actor had 
also told him that whenever a nobleman commanded a per- 
formance he always asked for a very short play and a very 
long farce, a disgrace which True Briton thought hardly pos- 
sible in a nation glorified by Shakespeare, Otway, Ben Jon- 
son, Congreve and Dryden. He ends with an appeal to the 
ladies to drive out foreign invaders and reform the theater, 
and a reprimand for the Prompter, which had praised Fran- 
cisque and his company, and had urged the translation of 
their plays into English. Bavius, in an editorial comment, 
approved True Briton’s zeal against foreign strollers, but 
tempered his heat with reservations in favor of Francisque 
and two or three others of the company, who, he said, were 
considered by good judges to have merit. 

Of course there was ample provocation for these letters, in 
spite of their absurdities and their narrow and ostentatious 
patriotism. The competition of foreign talent with native,7® 
and the lionizing of mediocrity from abroad by an un- 
critical public has always irked and irritated the dramatic 
and musical profession in England and America. Doubtless 
many of the foreigners were mere strollers, as they were 
accused of being, and were quite satisfied to act the rags and 
tatters of their repertoires in a slipshod, slovenly fashion for 
undiscriminating English audiences. Nevertheless the resent- 
ment toward them had in it a large proportion of jealousy, 
and a still greater of hidebound parochialism. Obviously 
True Briton, despite his protestations, shows himself, as much 
in his style as in his nom de plume, to have the true Anglo- 
Saxon suspicion and contempt for foreigners. For this spirit 
in its pure and unadulterated fervor, however, one should 
turn to “Staunch Old Briton” in number 312, who voices his 
indignation at the impending arrival of a company of Italian 

*’ The Journal announces the approach of an Italian opera season with 
the comment: “As this revival of Italian operas is grateful to some of 
our members [i.e. of the Grubstreet Society] who hope to have the trans- 


lating of them; so it is disagreeable to those greater geniuses who write 
English operas themselves.” See 41. 


222, THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


tumblers and rope-dancers from Paris. He declaims against 
the ‘“Faronellies, Cuzzonies and Francisques” who have 
“choused” the English nation of so much money, and hopes 
that the new band of invaders will be driven from the stage 
with cat-calls, peas, and potatoes; “if there be an honest, 
unpolluted Briton left, let him bravely cast the first stone.” 
“Let us drive these vermin from the British stage, and return 
them to the tumbling skip-frog nation from whence they 
came.” Such letters as these have dozens of parallels in other 
papers, both daily and weekly. They do not represent the 
particular point of view of the Journal and its following, but 
rather of that section of the public which hated the foreigners 
as much as another section petted and idolized them. 

The zealots for reforming the theater and restoring it to 
its ancient dignity lumped the foreign singers and actors with 
the still more dreadful menace of the “entertainment.” The 
foreigners, after all, made only sporadic and isolated raids, 
which though mischievous could never prove a mortal danger. 
The entertainment, on the other hand, was ever-present, and 
was, or so the serious-minded seemed to think, usurping 
more and more the place of genuine comedy and tragedy. 
Bitter complaints about the foreigners were common enough, 
but they seem comparatively infrequent beside the steady 
stream of satire and invective against the spectacle, the slap- 
stick humor, and the elaborate machinery of the entertain- 
ment. And naturally along with the cursing of the thing 
itself came denunciation of the public taste, or lack of taste, 
which bred it and nourished it into such rank growth. On 
this subject, as on the foreign actors, the tone of the Journal 
is hardly distinguishable from that of other papers. Its letters 
and essays are like those in the Prompter, the Craftsman, or 
Fog’s Journal. Those who expressed themselves in print were 
seemingly united in their detestation of the mummeries that 
tickled the public palate and made it impatient of plainer but 
solider food. One favorite attitude, that of righteous sorrow 
or indignation, is reflected in True Briton’s remarks about 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 223 


the noblemen who always ordered a very short play and a long 
entertainment.7® 

On the other hand, what would at present be called a 
more “constructive” point of view is taken by one “‘Scenicus” 
in number 384. After pointing out that the purpose of the 
stage is pleasure as well as instruction, he ventures to sug- 
gest that pantomimes, rightly managed and on proper sub- 
jects, might be as valuable as plays. To illustrate his point he 
cites a description from Apuleius of the Judgment of Paris 
—an elaborate scene full of conventional sylvan and pastoral 
charms, which obviously might be embodied in a pantomimic 
ballet. 

Some idea of the general type of these shows which so 
offended the dramatically righteous may be gained from a 
satirical description of them in a letter of “Harlequin Chef 
d’oeuvre”’ (number 269). The writer plans, he says, to pro- 
duce a wonderful entertainment. In this he is encouraged by 
the favor of the town toward such things and toward the 
French and Italian strollers. The subject is given as “The 
History of the Fall of the Tower of Babel,” the actors to be 
giants, and most of the dialogue in High Dutch, but with 
scraps of all other languages to suit all tastes. When the 
tower falls it is to turn into sugar loaves, which are to be 
eaten up by some of the actors. The stage is to be successively 
an orange grove, a dog kennel, a ship, a palace, a mountain, 
a windmill, a wheei-barrow, and finally a pleasant prospect of 
Hell. To all these wonders are to be added the attractions of 
famous jugglers, dancers, tumblers, and monsters. For his 
success in such a venture Harlequin says he relies on the well 
known hospitality of the British nation, and informs the 

© Some indication of the recognition in the theaters, or at least at Drury 
Lane, that the entertainment was more important than the play itself is 
given in a letter signed “Haberdasherus”’ in 340. The writer complains 
over having to pay two shillings for a gallery seat at an old play and a 
long tedious performance called in the bills an entertainment. He suggests 
that anyone who wishes to go out at the end of the play ought to get part 
of his money back. He asserts that this has been done at Drury Lane for 
patrons who wished to see a new pantomime, and asks why a similar 


arrangement should not be made for those who wished to see the play 
and avoid the entertainment. 


224 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


nobility that in supporting him they will be in no danger of 
serving their own countrymen, and besides, will be sure to 
transmit a favorable opinion of themselves abroad.®° 

In these insular, even parochial, fulminations one senses a 
spirit which has been ever since more or less rampant; some- 
times, it may be said, with very good reason and justification. 
It is nevertheless a personal, rather than a detached and dis- 
interested spirit, and, as has been continually noted, pervades 
other provinces where one would much less expect to find it. 
There is no reason why journalistic comment and contro- 
versy on points of art, literary or dramatic, should not be 
conducted without personal heat, but in the 1730’s they very 
rarely were. The Grub-street Journal and its companion jour- 
nals of a literary turn, as well as the floods of satire that the 
period produced, beget the impression that criticism and dis- 
cussion could hardly ever have taken the form of a walk in 
an academic grove where “cool gales did fan the glade.” The 
regular procedure seems to have been for a writer to gird up 
his loins, take his pen (and his life) in one hand and a dag- 
ger, or more often a bludgeon, in the other, and descend into 
the hurly-burly and uproar of Grub Street. For the stabs and 
bruises he was sure to receive—for certainly neither Pope 
nor Duck nor anyone between was safe from attack—he had 
to console himself by trying to give better than he took. 
Slanderous meanness and jealousy are not to be denied, but 
neither are energy and vivacity, and the bustle and excite-_ 
ment and high color of such a vividly personal age., There 
was roughness and brutality and very little squeamishness. 
It was no propitious time for the shy, the sensitive, and the 
tender, although after all one may ask what age is. Besides, 
among the survivors are to be found not only such sturdy 
beggars as the memorable Colley Cibber, but such first rate 

® Satire on the harlequinades and entertainments in prints and draw- 
ings was also common. A typical print of this sort, “The New Grand 
Triumphal Arch, or, The Stage’s Story,” is described at great length in 
number 61. This print is in the British Museum (Press Mark :—1868-8-8- 
3540). By Burineaux after Croquinolet. See also printed catalogue of 


Political and Personal Satires, 11: 739, where the Journal’s description is 
reprinted in full. 


LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 225 


geniuses as Swift, Pope and Fielding. And it is not merely 
that they survived. In great measure their interest springs 
from the impact of this life upon them; indeed from the very 
gusto with which they threw themselves into the thick of it. 


CHAPTERW 
THE LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 


Although the Journal’s original and fundamental interest 
was a literary one, its editors realized from the beginning 
that the public would hardly support year in and year out a 
paper devoted to literature pure and simple, let alone the 
literary quarrels of Alexander Pope. Hence very wisely its 
projectors planned from the very beginning to give it a 
general appeal. In their opening announcement they even 
assigned an editor to politics, although as a matter of fact 
they never allowed him to function, but even in the pre- 
eminently political age of Robert Walpole avoided political 
propaganda and discussion. If the paper kept its skirts free 
of politics, however, there were not, first and last, many 
other conceivable subjects which it failed to probe. Essays 
and letters on every subject under the sun from the excise to 
divine providence and back again to specific remedies for 
mad dog bites or the plague of vermin are scattered profusely 
over its pages. Much of this refuses to fit into any pigeon 
hole save miscellaneous, but a great deal of it is of a medical 
or theological turn. 

The religious and theological material in the paper may be 
explained satisfactorily enough by the fact of Russel’s pro- 
fession. A highly orthodox and conservative clergyman with- 
out a cure, but of a bitter and combative disposition, it is no 
wonder that he gave up so many of the Journal’s columns to 
discussion in his own field. In addition, from the point of 
view of readers’ interests, such subjects were not ill chosen. 
It was to be sure the age of Robert Walpole, but it was also 
the age of the deists. Disputatious free thinkers and apostles 
of “natural religion” were legion, and their outspoken hetero- 
doxies led continually to fierce controversies with spokesmen 
of the regular faith—controversies which very easily and 
naturally slipped into the unrestrained diatribe for which the 
Journal had infinite zest. 

[ 226 ] 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 227 


Again it was an age of notable quacks, creatures whose \ 


assurance and effrontery made them apt subjects for the 
Journal’s favorite weapons of irony and sarcasm, and whose 
widespread notoriety was an asset not only to themselves but 
also, in a way, to their enemies. As with the theological dis- 
cussions, the great amount of space given up to medical mate- 
rial, and especially to the exposure of quacks, testifies to a 
strong public interest in medical theories and in the em- 
pirics. The fact that Martyn was a botanical and medical 
scientist has not the same significance that Russel’s profes- 
sion has in connection with the theological material. Martyn 
parted company with the Journal in its second year, and yet 
its liveliest and most interesting medical controversies came 
after that time, especially its campaign against the great 
quack Ward, which is to be reckoned among its three or four 
major wars. The Journal was, however, a belligerent organ- 
ism with an eye always out for battle, and the fact that he 
was a parson did not deter Russel from venturing into alien 
territory where the fighting promised to be good. Still, Mar- 
tyn’s personal bias may be seen in the botanical and medical 
criticisms and essays attributed to him as “B” in The Mem- 
oirs of Grub-street. 

The third profession, the law, receives comparatively little 
attention. There is, of course, no particular reason why 
Russel or Martyn should have had much to say about legal 
points, but it is rather surprising that they should not have 
received more letters on them. Certainly the law has been in 
general as favored a subject for attack as theology or medi- 
cine, and the lawyer as often a target for satire as the phy- 
sician or divine. Yet for whatever reason it was, the Journal 
did not happen to light often upon the absurdities of legal 
pedants or the villanies of shysters. 

The comparatively few contributions dealing with the law 
in one aspect or another follow more or less conventional 
lines and make points that might be predicted. There is satire 
for instance on the inequality of the rich and poor before the 
law, on the pomposity of legal writing, and on the knavery 


228 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


of shysters. There are attacks on the excise on liquors, the 
execution of the law by constable and bailiffs,t and the legal 
worship of tradition and precedent. 

During the first months of 1730, as the Journal was get- 
ting under way, London was agog over the case of the in- 
famous Colonel Chartres, under arrest for the rape of a 
servant girl. Allusions to the case in the early issues of the 
paper were frequent, and echoes of it occur even as late as 
number 393, when appeared Arbuthnot’s pungent epitaph on 
Chartres—‘‘Here continueth to rot the body of Francis 
Charteris,” and so on—done into Latin by a youth of 
Charleston, South Carolina. The Journal’s allusions are al- 
ways deeply tinged with a sardonic contempt; for instance, 
it reported (number 41) his serious illness at his house in 
Hanover Square with the comment: ‘Had the Colonel put 
on the infallible Anodyne Necklace some time ago, as was 
generally desired, this dangerous illness had been pre- 
vented.”’? This cause célébre was doubtless the starting point 
of the first two notable legal satires in the Journal. In number 
10, Bavius published an ironic defense of the rich from the 
rigors of the law.* Opening with a couplet from Garth’s 
Dispensary— 

Little villains must submit to fate 
That great ones may enjoy the world in state— 


he stated as commonly accepted in belief and practice the 
principle that the rich should not endure the same penalties 


* The general impression is of course that the minions of the law were 
brutal and ferocious, but a contributor to 382 asserts that while the Eng- 
lish laws are as good as those of any nation, they are very badly enforced, 
and thinks that “constables ought to be fined for not carrying out their 
duties more strictly. 

>The Anodyne Necklace was a widely advertised contrivance of bone 

beads for the pacification of teething children. It furnished humorists of 
‘the period with one of their favorite quips; it is continually used as a 
name for the hangman’s rope. Chartres died within about two years, and 
a fantastic account of his funeral in Edinburgh appears in 117. A great 
hurricane having arisen, the populace concluded that the devil had carried 
away both the body and soul, and thereupon seized the leaden coffin, 
opened it, beat it flat, “punched it full of holes,’ and threw it into the 
grave with six dead dogs after it. 

* Russel; signed “M” in the Memoirs. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 229 


for crime as the poor. It was, he said, “more difficult to get a 
rich man hanged than to save a poor fellow from the gal- 
lows.” The prosecution of the rich was always attended, 
moreover, by serious evils. The rich were always forced to 
spend in prison great sums of money that would otherwise 
go to honest and industrious people. Their trials were always 
attended by bribery, forgery, and perjury, and always 
stamped a lasting mark of infamy upon the defendant. If 
convicted, he was sure to be degraded from his high station, 
and could not hope for a pardon, because the conviction would 
have been for a second offense at any rate, and since any 
action in his favor would be hindered by the prejudices of 
the common people against the rich. And, most serious of all, 
the prosecution and conviction of the great resulted in a loss 
to the nation of those who should administer its justice and 
lead its armies. In view of all these regrettable facts, Bavius 
suggested a law exempting the great from prosecution for 
murder, rape, and sodomy, crimes committed chiefly by those 
in the higher levels of society. This savage humor, most cer- 
tainly Russel’s reaction to the circumstances of the Chartres 
trial, was further developed, especially in its last point, by 
his colleague Martyn,* four weeks later. In much the same 
vein, but with less fierceness and power, it was argued that a 
gentleman should never be fined for adultery, since he re- 
garded it merely as a piece of gallantry, having been bred up 
to “polite and free maxims.” Also in case of trial the jury 
should be chosen from gentlemen of the same station, and 
bachelors, to avoid all prejudice. As for rapes, they were out 
of the way of ordinary tradesmen, and the chief point for 
consideration should be whether the defendant were qualified 

*Signed “B” in the Memoirs. Although Martyn doubtless had the 
Charteris case still in mind, his chief interest, as footnotes in the 
Memoirs show, was in another scandal, the Abergavenny case. An in- 
trigue between Lady Abergavenny and Richard Lyddell had been discov- 
ered in November, 1729, and Lord Abergavenny had been awarded 
£10,000 damages in court. The affair was the subject of a sensational 
poem, Calista to Altamont, which drew forth Martyn’s article in 14, and 
subsequent verses by Russel (“M’’) in 19 and 21. According to Martyn, 


“our greatest adversary [i.e. Pope] had said that the author of this 
poem ought to be whipped and pilloried.”’ 


230 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


by birth, education, and fortune for such entertainment. If 
found to be so qualified he should be acquitted and the woman 
required to live with him if he so desired. Otherwise she 
should be sent to a house of correction for refusing what a 
gentleman had a right to require.® 

The execution of the law by its minor officers, a common 
subject for attack in contemporary comedies, novels, and 
prints also crops up several times in the Journal. In one in- 
stance the Journal championed the cause of a group of gentle- 
men who clamored loudly from the Fleet, where they were 
imprisoned for debt, for redress from the oppressions of the 
deputy warden. This personage had been in number 39 the 
subject of a humorous letter in which he was ridiculed as the 
“tremendous Deputy Warden,” but a consistent attack on 
him from the pen of one of his prisoners, John Williams,® 
began in number 59 and continued intermittently for nearly 
nine months. These gentlemen’s grievance was that although 
they had paid regular fees they were not allowed the rooms 
and privileges due them, but had been “locked down on the 
common side,” where they were languishing away. In fact 
some, according to Williams, were practically at the point of 
death, and in certain cases their distress was so great as to 
touch the hearts of their relatives and their creditors, who 
had secured their release. The Journal gave Williams the 
freedom of its columns to express his troubles and those of 
his companions, and to answer the defenses of the warden 
appearing in the Daily Advertiser. To that extent it showed 
sympathy with the complainants. It did not go out of its way, 
however, to support them editorially, and in one case at least 
when it referred to their troubles, it assumed a distinctly 
flippant tone. J. W. having thanked the Journal somewhat 
effusively for its kindness, the editors remark that their pub- 
lication of J. W.’s current screed was due to “our tender 


° The next week the Journal reprinted the news that a man convicted 
of the rape of a child had been sentenced to a whipping and one year’s 
hard labor, with Martyn’s comment, “He was well served, being a person 
not duly qualified for those sports.” 

° The verses and letters are signed “J. W.”, but finally the name is 
mentioned in full. See 59, 69, and 72-96 passim, and an echo in 130. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE Za 


compassion toward Gentlemen in confinement who . . . can- 
not vent their complaints in any other newspapers,” but they 
hope nevertheless that he will be briefer next time. This tone 
and the lack of any specific backing up of J. W. with the 
sarcasm and irony in which Russel at least was a past master, 
would hardly indicate that J. W. had been able to inspire the 
hearts of the editors with any particular compassion.* The 
only serious discussion to which the episode gave rise seems 
to have been a letter (number 93) from “The Seeker” on 
arrest, especially for debt, pointing out that gentlemen, who 
would naturally suffer more than others from the hardships 
of prison life, were not subject to the reliefs frequently 
granted in case of arrest. 

In several other instances the Journal accepted com- 
munications on the petty extortions and cruelties of prison 
officials. “Caterpillars” and “hungry miscreants’ are char- 
acteristic terms applied to these creatures by one “Publicola” 
in 186, and they are charged with bleeding prisoners at 
every opportunity and with having discovered ways to evade 
all the laws for the protection of prisoners. Indeed, this par- 
ticular writer continues, they have brought their offices into 
such ill repute and rendered themselves so contemptible that 
no decent man would become a prison officer. Another cor- 
respondent undertakes to demonstrate that the law is “the 
greatest grievance under which the people of England labor,” 
that it is in effect as irksome as a general franchise. After 
declaring that at every county assize one might behold 
parents offering up children, or children parents, to the 
Moloch of the law, and finding fault with the voluminous- 
ness of the law and the advantage commonly taken of it, 
he settles down to extended abuse of its officers, especially 
catchpoles and bailiffs. In fact, in the second installment of 
his letter, he declares that between the catchpoles, who often 
ruin a poor man, wringing from him twice the amount of 

"The final item in this affair is the announcement in 96 that the suit 
of John Williams against the warden, for failure to supply a chamber for 


which he had been paid, had been won, and that the warden had been 
reprimanded by the court. 


Zaz THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


the debt which brought him to prison, and the lawyers, who 
despoil their clients and against whom there is little hope 
of redress, because of the strong esprit de corps of their 
profession, the case of the wretched prisoner is desperate 
enough (numbers 223 and 227). 

The crime of extortion, the traditional charge against 
lawyers, is cited against them much less often than one 
would expect. In 162 is related the history of a lawsuit in 
which two solicitors, having privately accused each other 
of knavery and having both of them extorted large sums of 
money, were finally brought to justice in a trial in which 
each tried to prove the other the greater knave. In numbers 
189, 191, and 192 is a series of three epigrams on the same 
point. The first deals with a lawyer who after winning a 
suit for £500, “honestly” let his client have £400, and 
thought so well of himself that he had the fact recorded on 
the memorial to him in his parish church. The epigram is as 
follows : 

Did Damus gain a cause? This should be told 
In brightest letters of immortal gold. 


And did he once restore what he’d laid hand on? 
This well deserves a golden Memorandum. 


These lines adapted and with the addition— 


And pity ’tis, since these so fair appear 
But all his deeds were thus recorded here. 


—were inserted in number 192. The issue of the previous 
week had also contained an epigram on a contest between a 
lawyer and a priest in which both appeared fools and knaves, 
and a quite characteristic reply by Maevius, or Russel, who 
was always quick to take offense at any aspersion upon the 
clergy, to the effect that they might be equal as fools, but 
_ one might possibly be a greater knave than the other. The 
only serious discussion of this vice of attorneys seems to 
consist in a technical analysis of a recent law to protect 
clients against overcharge, with the conclusion that in prac- 
tice the law had been very ineffective (number 355). 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 233 


Occasionally one comes upon single, isolated letters bear- 
ing on the law, which in one way or another have some inter- 
est as reflecting contemporary attitudes toward legal insti- 
tutions. One correspondent, “T. B.” (in number 324), who 
must have been the incarnation of conservatism, submits 
reasons against the repeal of the statutes on witchcraft, then 
pending in Parliament. In what seems a thoroughly serious 
tone, he urges the tradition and the antiquity of these laws, 
and argues that if they were absurd they would have been 
repealed before. Another (number 372) suggests that a 
good law passed under the commonwealth is of interest as 
proving that bad men may make good laws. The traditional 
English love of liberty and hatred of oppression is manifest 
in an attack on a bill against rogues and vagabonds, which 
is said to convey dangerous powers to magistrates, in fact to 
savor of the absolutism one would expect in Turkish 
bashaws. It was probably this same spirit of liberty that 
prompted an article by “A. B.” in number 370 on the vari- 
ous means proposed for regulating the trade in spirits. He 
is opposed to all drastic measures as being the ruin of vested 
property of distillers or retailers, and proposes rather to 
limit the trade, prohibiting sale to women and children and 
fixing the amount sold to men. In a free nation, he says, 
mildest remedies are most effective; violent ones, he asserts 
with some wisdom, stir up determined opposition on all 
sides, and are justified only as a last resort. In this connec- 
tion it may be said that the references in the Journal to the 
excise on spirits, gin especially, are uniformly hostile and 
derisive. Most of them are flippantly contemptuous, as in a 
ribald ballad, The Constitution Clap’d (number 160), and 
an obituary of the Lady Geneva (number 391). Allusions 
to the excise, however, are frequent enough to indicate a 
strong current of public hostility.® 

It is perhaps worth nothing that all these letters and 
verses on the law and things legal are scattered and frag- 


*For the most notable allusions to the excise, see 160, 164, 170, 172, 
173, 182, 222, 229, 230, 370, 371, 391, 407. 


234 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


mentary. With the possible exception of the series of letters 
against the deputy warden of the Fleet Prison, they are all 
slight and sporadic. Moreover, they are all outside contribu- 
tions; the editors themselves apparently were not interested 
enough either to write themselves, or even to comment at 
any length on the letters they published. In medical and re- 
ligious discussions the case was quite different. Bavius— 
both Martyn and Russel—wrote continually in both fields, 
and often accepted letters, it would seem, merely for the sake 
of replying to them. 

The numerical strength and the initiative of the deists 
during this part of the eighteenth century made arguments 
over their heresies bitter and violent. It was to be expected 
that orthodox divines and theologians should regard them 
and their works as anathema. And among the orthodox there 
was probably not to be found a more conservative defender 
of intrenched dogma than the non-juring clergyman, Russel.® 
Anything that savored in the slightest degree of heterodoxy 
was sure of contempt and denunciation from his pen, and the 
disparager of the clergy of the Church of England might 
well expect disagreeably incisive argument with a due ad- 
mixture of personality, in the Journal’s columns. The height 
of vituperation to which Russel could rise in a theological 
quarrel has already been demonstrated in the account of 
the Journal’s quarrel with the Bee and the Prompter over 
such a deistic document as Matthew Tindall’s ‘““Philosopher’s 
Prayer.’”’!° There is satire and discussion in the Journal on 
other religious issues than deism, but this particular heresy 
was flaring up so brightly and vigorously during the Jour- 
nal’s day as to make all other issues pale and unimportant, 
and to monopolize for itself most of the current religious 
discussion. 

®For instance, to the London Journal’s attack on the theory that the 
church is the support of the state, Russel (‘““M”) answered in 116 that 
church and state never existed very long apart. Also in 120, he prefaced 
an ironical “treatise” on a bill to reduce tithes (wherein he expatiated 
on the great wealth of the rural clergy, much in the manner of Swift or 
Defoe) with the remark that he hoped it would clear the Journal of the 


aspersion of being “favorers of priest-craft.” 
See ante, p. 144. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 235 


Anti-deistic writing in the Journal is chiefly in the form 
of direct attack on some particular deist, or even on a single 
utterance. “The Philosopher’s Prayer” just referred to was 
the subject of one of the paper’s longest and most bitterly 
personal quarrels. Nevertheless, some of the discussion of 
deism in general is almost as vivid and sensational, although 
not focussed on an individual person. The Journal and its 
contributors seem to have regarded deists as outlaws, and 
deism itself as beyond the pale. There is no such thing as 
an unbiassed, reasonable analysis of its principles. On the 
other hand, the blasphemous absurdity of deistic ideas is 
taken for granted and they are mentioned only as evils to 
be uprooted, while the deists themselves are presented as 
compounds of foolishness and downright knavery and wick- 
edness, creatures unworthy of any consideration whatsoever. 

An anti-deistic letter representing religious argument at 
its worst appears in number 139. The author rages in im- 
potent futility against the unorthodox who undertake to 
answer the unanswerable arguments of the orthodox, refus- 
ing to recognize the impregnability of their opponents and 
advancing as “answers” books which completely miss the 
mark. Another correspondent (number 226) attacks those 
modern infidels who are “ambitious of being nothing,’ and 
asserts that their reasoning is altogether opposed to the 
natural bent of the mind, that their claim of a foundation 
for their beliefs in basic morality is false and insincere, and 
that they make proselytes of the giddy and weak-minded. 
In somewhat the same vein is “The Modern Goliah” (num- 
ber 196), verses on the free thinker who scorns the soul and 
the gift of everlasting life, laughs at hell-fire (number 296) 
and believes in “living and dying like beasts.’ Still another, 
whose letter is inspired by the controversy over ‘“The Phil- 
osopher’s Prayer’”’, and who descends for an example upon 
Eustace Budgell, ‘‘a confident, crack-brained coxcomb’’, at- 
tacks the stupidity of such atheistical writers, and, divided 
“between indignation and contempt”, announces, “I never 
read any of their trash, any otherwise than as quoted by 


236 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


you.” The deists’ demand for simplicity and directness in 
interpretation and their somewhat inconsistent proneness to 
extensive philosophizing is ridiculed in an epigram (number 
311) on a writer who said 


‘Let no one’s words be heard but Christ’s alone’ 
And then he adds ten million of his own. 


The Journal also published a series of extracts from an 
old Discourse of Freethinking,.under the heading “Instances 
of the chief free-thinkers’ skill in the Latin language’, to 
illustrate errors in translation, cases of garbling, and so 
forth."? 

Almost the only calm and impersonal approach toward 
the subject is to be found in the attempt of a writer in num- 
ber 322 to fathom the reasons for the present decay of learn- 
ing, especially religious. Is it, he asks, because we have, in 
our own estimation, conquered all knowledge? For, he con- 
tinues, we set up to be originals, and take pride in demolish- 
ing the opinions of our ancestors. He reminds his readers 
that the pursuit of riches interferes with learning, and points 
to Erasmus and Usher as men who avoided wealth lest if 
come between them and their goal. Pedantry too, he thinks, 
may have had an evil influence—‘From the Restoration we 
have been polishing learning, rather than making any addi- 
tion to it”; and finally and most remarkably, he blames “the 
luxury of the press’”—“the natural ardor . . . is stifled by 
fuel.” 

With the possible exception of this last letter, these in- 
stances illustrate the temper of the Journal toward deism. 
Hatred and contempt are generally intensified when they 
become focussed on the person who holds an idea rather 
than on the idea itself. So the attacks on individual deists, 
though the same in tone, are fiercer and more bitter than 
those on deism itself ; witness again the virulent quarrel over 
Tindall’s will and his “Philosopher’s Prayer,’ which mo- 
nopolizes so much of the Journal’s space during its middle 


* See 275, 276, 279, 281, 284, 288. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 23h 


‘period. Although this was its most extensive personal con- 
troversy over religious matters, the paper had before made 
personal attacks in the field of religion. Indeed, signs of 
Russel’s very keen interest in such matters appear almost 
at once. The early issues of the Journal abound in sarcastic 
allusions to Thomas Woolston and his allegorical inter- 
pretations of Scripture, which seem to have attracted at the 
moment a good deal of public notice. For instance, in num- 
ber 13, in an attack on an anonymous pamphlet, The Materi- 
ality or Mortality of the Soul of Man,” Russel-goes out of 
his way in a preliminary diatribe to express his contempt 
for Woolston. Formerly, he says, those advancing new re- 
ligious ideas relied on style, wit, or new material. It was not 
so any longer. Woolston had made himself famous by an 
attack on the miracles— 

This invective of his against our blessed Savior consists of such 
low jokes and such opprobrious language that, if we may form a 
judgment of the wit of the Galilaean fisherman by that of the fisher- 
men and watermen on the Thames, Judas himself would have written 


with more vivacity and elegancy agay ° the miracles of his master 
than the learned and ingenious Mr. \voolston. 


A similarly vigorous frontal attack on Woolston was pub- 
lished in number 24, where “Philo-Libertas,” with the text 
“Answer a fool according to his folly,’ urged the necessity 
of answering such men as the deist. Woolston’s writing, it is 
said, does not spring ‘from an honest and sincere desire of 
removing error, and re-establishing truth. . . .”” His works 
are declared to be “full of malicious reflections, arrogant 
boasts and scurrilous banters,” and it is asserted that 

he has treated not only his adversaries but even his subject, the most 
sacred person and the most sacred things, with a most audacious and 


blasphemous ridicule . . . the true motive of his undertaking was 
only to gratify the irregular passions of his own depraved heart. 


In a lighter vein, and perhaps more effective, are the frequent 
interpretations “of current happenings in the Woolstonian 
manner.”’ Russel undertook to apply Woolston’s methods to 


*In the British Museum, author unknown. The attack on it is 
ascribed in the Memoirs to “M.” 


238 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


a remarkable thunderstorm (number 23) ; he explained the 
allegory at large, and showed how exactly the letter and the 
spirit tallied,” and also to a report from Rome of a complaint 
at the furious speed with which the Chevalier St. George had 
his coach driven through the streets. A correspondent “N. 
T.” (number 27) wrote that he had heard Woolston’s con- 
finement in the King’s Bench Prison explained away in a 
coffee house as a mere allegorical statement that the gentle- 
man had bought a suit of clothes too small for him. On 
visiting the prison, however, he saw Woolston literally— 
he seemed to be made up of whim, madness and contemplation; his 
aspect sullen, morose, and daring; .. . reasoning, swearing, argu- 
ing, drolling, all in the same breath. I could just hear him muttering 
to himself the names of Collins, Tindal, and Jesus Christ; which last 
he never mentioned but with a seeming contempt or abhorrence. 

N. T. goes on to imply that Woolston was an infidel merely 
because money was to be had by it. When it was finally 
announced that Woolston had secured a writ of habeas cor- 
pus, the Journal commented gravely: “It is disputed whether 
this is to be taken figuratively or literally.”’? From the fre- 
quency with which Woolston’s name appears during the 
first year or two of the Journal, it may well be inferred that 
he was regarded as the arch-heretic. Others are sometimes 
mentioned, especially Collins, Tindall,1* and Whiston,—the 
opinions of the last are quoted at length in numbers 34 and 
36, notably his remark that a nettle was a better evidence 
of God than the subtlest metaphysics!*—but Woolston 
bears the brunt of the attack. 

*«N. T.” becomes “T. N.” in the Memoirs. For similar satire see 
25; 5382, .96; 157. 

*Tn the long wrangle with the Bee and the Prompter, Tindall, al- 
though lately dead, was by no means spared. The Journal published 
(265) an abstract of a scurrilous pamphlet, The religious, rational, and 
moral conduct of Matthew Tindal, accusing him of various vices which 
were illustrated in sundry anecdotes and stories. He was made out glut- 
tonous, selfish, ignorant, and overweeningly ambitious. It was said that 
he had turned Catholic to secure the favor of James II, and though a 
secret deist had conformed to the Church to save his fellowship. The 
author even denominated him “an egregious fornicator’ and cited in- 
stances of his having attempted to saddle his bastard children upon other 
men. 


*Tn quotation from and comment on his life of Dr. Samuel Clarke. 
In 266 it is noticed that Whiston had denied a prophecy regarding a 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 239 


The Journal, however, did make during its second year a 
comparatively brief but lively sortie against a clergyman of 
deistic tendencies, Bowman, the vicar of Dewsbury. This 
person had inflamed the anger of Russel by a published 
sermon,1® The Traditions of the Clergy Destructive of Re- 
ligion—a thesis which, almost more than any other, might 
be counted on to raise a hornet’s nest in the Journal. As a 
consequence number 82 contained the epigram— 

In durance vile while pious Woolston lies 

And death waits near to close learn’d Tindal’s eyes 
The priest’s hard fortune and the layman’s fate 
Seem to presage Religion’s ruined state. 

But thou, O Bowman wilt the loss supply 

Of both; and whilst thou live she cannot die. 


To thy due station may’st thou rise much quicker 
And cease to lye of Dewsbury the Vicar. 


This was followed in number 85 and 87 by a long con- 
temptuous letter railing violently at Bowman for his impu- 
dence in daring to attack the clergy, ridiculing his points 
against the episcopal system, and also detailing a fiction 
about Phillis, an “itinerant bookseller’? who sold copies of 
the infamous sermon by crying, “Here’s a sermon against 
religion.” In numbers 91 and following, the attack was 
shifted to another sermon defending the miracle of the 
cursed fig tree. Bowman is convicted of a conceited dog- 
matism, and phrases from his dedication of the fig tree ser- 
mon are held up to derision. In number 93 came an epigram 
on the sudden cessation of sales of the first sermon and the 
publication of the second, which is compared to a comet 
which blazed, died out, fell, and upon examination proved 
to be a “blasted, barren fig-tree.” A correspondent, “Laicus”’ 


destructive comet, and in 272 his new Josephus was subjected by “Ortho- 
doxus” to criticism for inaccuracy—criticisms which are in turn ques- 
tioned by Bavius himself. Whiston’s arguments in The Primitive Euchar- 
ist Revived are attacked in 345. 

** See advertisement of it in number 87. For a slight and not very 
illuminating account of Bowman see Nichols, I, 457 ff., where is to be 
found a quotation from “Bomanou Kluthi, or Hark to Bowman,” a 
squib on the notorious fig-tree sermon. The sermon noted above is said 
by Russel (Memoirs, number 85) to have been taken chiefly from The 
Rights of the Christian Church and The Independent Whig. 


240 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


(number 94), who despite his pseudonym conveys a clerical 
impression, continues the ridicule of Bowman’s arguments 
and indicates that the answers to Bowman’s sermons have 
shown him almost illiterate. The final touch, however, came 
in a dialogue in number 96, between Bowman and a Quaker, 
wherein the latter, of a sect especially obnoxious to the 
Journal (although later it had to bear with a Quaker book- 
seller, Huggonson), calls Bowman, a clergyman of the 
Church, to shame for presuming it his duty to free Christ 
from the imputation of unreasonableness in asking the tree 
to bear at the wrong time.?* 

Russel’s interest in this attack is shown by the fact that 
much of this material was brought together and amplified in 
a pamphlet called Grubstreet vs. Bowman with a dedication 
“not to the Bishop of London . . . but to a much greater 
person in his own conceit—Mr. Bowman himself.’’?® Still, 
Bowman was dropped at this point, except for a parting shot 
some months later (number 137) when Bavius remarked 
upon the news that Bowman had finished a defense of him- 
self and an address to the English laity: ‘““We do not hear, 
but we hope, that this Reverend Gentleman has written his 
defence of himself in English; a language which he seemed 
to be learning when he wrote his sermon.” 

In general, as in the attacks on deism and its exponents, 
the Journal’s strong bias in favor of all the established insti- 
tutions of the church, its dogmas and its organization, is 
only too apparent. There are occasional notes of satire on the 
corruption of the clergy, but they are comparatively rare and 
are almost entirely obscured by the fierce assaults on the 
heterodox. The Journal published in numbers 142 and 146 a 
versified letter from a rector to his curate and the latter’s 
_answer, satirizing in a familiar vein the selfishness and mate- 
rialism of the clergy, with their interest focussed on the 


” The writer cites from the sermon a passage to prove that a symbolic 
interpretation was possible and that Christ was not unreasonable. 

*® Advertised in 93. Nevertheless, in 102 one “Philo-Vermigeneris” 
praises the Journal for the way it disposed of Bowman, and urges it to 
collect its material into a sixpenny pamphlet, which should be highly 
diverting. 


LAW win BhOLOGY AND MEDICINE 241 


tithes and the parsonage, driving their tenants and leaving 
their churches to the wardens and to miserably paid curates. 
One also finds occasional notes on some individual clergy- 
man, as the one on an Oxford preacher who was so extrava- 
gantly learned in a sermon that the laughter of the congre- 
gation could be heard forty yards off (number 196), or the 
letter (number 224) from a member of a congregation near 
the Royal Exchange, who declared that his clergyman ogled 
the ladies from his pulpit and exhibited all the graces of a 
beau, in a manner “ridiculous, scandalous, and utterly unbe- 
coming a clergyman in his desk.’’!® Similarly the parsons of 
the Fleet, who were said to entice women away from their 
friends and then force them to marry, merely for the sake of 
the fee, were brought to the public notice by a correspondent 
in number 270. The real sympathy of the Journal is never- 
theless much better shown by the zeal with which it flew to 
arms against Bowman, and by its hatred and contempt for 
all dissenters and heretics. In contrast with the anti-clerical 
passages just mentioned, and much more representative, is 
the ironical discussion of a pending tithe bill allowing pay- 
ment in goods. The writer asserts that parsons get huge sal- 
aries averaging £80 a year, on which they die rich and leave 
their daughters great fortunes. On the other hand, squires 
are known to be men “of great humanity and good breeding, 
of sound morals and unquestionable learning” and should be 
given legal aid to make themselves still more like eastern 
bashaws. Tithes should be made as hard as possible to col- 
lect. A gentleman farmer (illiterate) and a free-thinker are 
quoted as advocates of the proposed measure (number 120). 
In number 380 ‘Eusebius Old-fashion” dilates on the general 
godliness and piety of the clergy, and lays the “great con- 
tempt of the clergy—which is so very prevailing at present”’ 
to a minority “too much conformed to this world.” Russel’s 
zeal in fact often brought down upon his head the personal 
abuse of the less orthodox—note again the case of ‘The 


* Hogarth, and the satirical literature of the time, are of course replete 
with instances of such characteristics in clergymen. 


242 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Philosopher’s Prayer’—abuse, however, on which he seems 
to have thrived. In number 99 appeared a letter of warning 
against dissenting preachers who came over into the church 
in search of preferment, with the particular case of a Mr. 
J—s, a dissenter who hypocritically professed conversion, 
but acted very badly on not getting the advancement he ex- 
pected, and went back to his original fold. This drew forth 
the next week a most violent reply signed “Catholicus,” 
abusing not only the Journal as “a vehicle of party scandal, 
malice, and ill-nature” but likewise, Russel and the clergy of 
the established church. 

I ask [wrote Catholicus] who made you a censor or dictator in mat- 
ters either civil or religious, you (who as I am informed) are as 
scandalous in your morals as uncharitable in your censures.... 
You it is certain are a doughty hero for the established church, 
who are known to be a debauched, non-juring priest... Mr. 
Nu—ll, . . . a bastard son of the dear Church. 

This letter, which probably did not inflict great pain, else it 
had not been printed, received due notice in number 104. The 
editors easily evaded the personal attack, hiding behind the 
shifting personality of Bavius, who was both Martyn and 
Russel. It was described as ‘“‘abuse of the established church 
in general and of an unknown person in particular.”” Nu—tl, 
which was undoubtedly an intentional misprint of Ru—tl, 
was interpreted as Numskull, and it was asserted that the 
person who took upon himself the name of Bavius was not in 
orders, and never hoped to be—which was the truth as far 
as Martyn was concerned. 

The militant orthodoxy of the Journal showed itself most 
clearly in its abuse of free-thinking and deism, but it was 
also virulent against other groups outside the pale of the 
establishment. Occasionally the Presbyterians are mentioned 
in passing with contempt, but the two sects which seem to 
have been regarded as especially hateful were the Roman 
Catholics and the Quakers. Slurs against the Catholics, how- 
ever, are usually inspired by the traditional English fear and 
hatred of Popery and especially of the Jesuits, and have the 
commonplace and casual tone of generally recognized fact. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 243 


Yet occasionally one comes upon an anti-Catholic utterance 
marked enough to attract attention, as in the case of verses 
(number 194), purporting to be by a Dominican, on a pic- 
ture of Christ as a Jesuit. The author, whoever he was, 
declared that he would rather die a Jew than a Jesuit, and 
asserted that the Jesuits dressed God in their clothes that 
they might make him hated among men, as they were. The 
traditional insidious and mysterious wisdom of the Catholics 
is also recognized in an epigram in both Latin and English 
on those foolish dissenters who had the temerity to enter into 
argument with Catholics. The general idea, well represented 
by the phrase ‘“‘so may the silly dove attempt the hawk,”’ is 
that the Catholics are so great and powerful that the only 
adversaries fit to cope with them are those blessed with 
wealth, high position, and “‘pompous titles.” 

The Quakers had been noticed once or twice in the early 
years of the Journal, and during its last issues were the sub- 
ject of a heated controversy. In number 126 the Journal 
published a Quaker letter from Pennsylvania in answer to an 
attack by the Rev. Patrick Smith called a ‘‘Preservative 
against Quakerism.” The writer of the letter undertook to 
demonstrate by ten quotations from Quaker literature that 
“we .. . are believers in God, in Christ, and of his Church,” 
and consequently not “Deists, Enthusiasts, Hereticks, or 
Schismaticks.” Six months later (number 145) appeared a 
burlesque Quaker letter signed “Esther Zealous,” apparently 
ridiculing The Friendly Writer by Ruth Collins, under the 
guise of a fanatical repudiation of it as not being good 
Quaker doctrine. Serious consideration of the Quakers, how- 
ever, came much later. In 1736, there was before Parliament 
a bill to release Quakers from tithes, a measure which led to 
extensive argument on the moral and religious qualities of 
the sect. The discussion opened (number 330) impersonally 
enough with an analysis of the legal steps necessary to secure 
tithes from Quakers, but was followed in number 335 by 
“A New Ballad on the Quakers Tithe Bill,’ opening, “A 


244 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Quaker is a cunning knave,” and charging him with refusal 
of allegiance to the throne and repudiation of the Bible. A 
typical stanza goes— 
Our laws and customs Quakers hate 
And never eat minced pies. 


They keep their hats upon their heads 
And think to pay no tithes. 


These stanzas giving offense to John Huggonson, a 
Quaker and the Journal’s printer, he dissected them phrase 
by phrase in number 338 and pointed out their “falsehood 
and ill-will.” After this the discussion was allowed to lapse 
for nearly a year, or until number 386, when “E. O.,” a 
bigoted and unreasonable correspondent,?° again broached 
the matter. According to him, the Quakers, though they had 
more allowance than other dissenters, still cried for further 
exemptions. Their motives were purely mercenary, and 
doubtless if all tithes were transferred to them they would 
accept them. To support the truth of this assertion he tells of 
a Quaker in Berkshire who farmed the tithes of the parish 
where he lived, and presents with due horror the absolute 
truth that ‘one of the Reverend Bench” employed a Quaker 
as a steward. He also demonstrated an affinity between 
Quakerism and deism and voiced a suspicion that there was 
a plot on foot against all tithes. The absurdities of this letter 
were adequately exposed in number 388 by “‘B. J.,” a Quaker, 
who describes the Quakers’ bill as a regular, orderly request 
with nothing strange about it, and points out that no com- 
plaint had been made when it failed. As to the charge of 
deism, that, he said, ‘“‘discovers a most gross ignorance of 
their writings.” In the next issue (number 389) the Quaker’s 
objections to tithes were also supported by the scriptural 
citations of an anonymous author. E.O. nevertheless con- 
tinued his campaign with a ridiculously credulous letter in 
number 390. He now represented the Quakers as tools of the 
Jesuits in an elaborate campaign. Rome, recognizing the 
Church of England as the strongest bulwark in the world 


” He has a letter in 389 on the insolence and degeneracy of servants. 


DAV aE OLOGY AND. WE DICINE 245 


against its “false doctrines and superstitious, idolatrous 
worship,” had planned to reduce England to atheism as the 
“best soil for Popery to grow in’’—1in pursuance of which 
design had been bred “their Brat, Quakerism.’’ He points 
out the significant failure of the Quakers, unlike other dis- 
senters, to rail against the whore of Babylon, and their will- 
ingness alone among dissenting sects, to allow Catholics to 
consort with them. This brought another remonstrance from 
B. J., and led to mutual charges of hot temper, poor logic 
and judgment, and so forth. In number 393 another cor- 
respondent, “A. Z.,” came to E. O.’s support, with dark 
questions as to why Catholics had so much freedom to sell 
rosary beads and other trappings of Popery, and to maintain 
so many chapels, and tells in great detail of a Catholic chapel 
in Philadelphia to which the Quaker authorities of the colony 
allowed full freedom. He even insisted that the Journal had 
aroused the Quakers’ ire and that they had organized in their 
own defense. This outburst drew forth what is really the 
most sensible and interesting letter in the whole controversy. 
“C. V.,” in number 395, after condemnation of A. Z. as “a 
fiery zealot,” presented the cause of complete toleration, 
arguing that if the Quakers of Philadelphia tolerated a 
Catholic chapel they merely showed their good sense. It was, 
he said, the wisest course for “a trading nation” like the 
English, who drew their living from their intercourse with 
other nations, to be tolerant of all religion, and he ends with 
the hope that the king will protect all people in the exercise 
of religious liberty. E. O., nothing daunted, appeared again 
in number 398 with a series of violent aspersions. He dilated 
upon the “Blasphemy, Nonsense, and Stupidity” of Quaker 
writings, even those of George Fox, retailed the history of 
the Quaker family in Berkshire which had farmed the tithes 
in its parish for sixty years, and repeated anecdotes of Wil- 
liam Penn’s connection with Catholics—of his education by 
Jesuits and of his appearance in Rome in Jesuit costume. 
As usual, B. J. undertook an answer. He submitted let- 
ters between Penn and Tillotson to disprove E. O.’s charges 


246 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


against Penn’s character, and showed the misrepresenta- 
tions involved in the Berkshire story; the Quakers con- 
cerned, it appears, had collected the tithes without profit to 
themselves merely for the convenience of their landlord. 
Penn’s letters, frank and ingenuous as they were, were of 
little avail in clearing the air, for the next week, in num- 
ber 409, appeared a scornful rejection of them as valid evi- 
dence by one “D. D.,” who called attention to the fact that 
Tillotson had merely accepted Penn’s word that he was not a 
Papist—‘‘As if the sole declaration of any suspected papist 
could be alone sufficient to remove that suspicion.” 

With this letter the quarrel came to an abrupt and incon- 
clusive ending. The paper was now at its last gasp—it sur- 
vived only two months more—and many threads were being 
left at loose ends. It is noteworthy too that the quarrel was 
entirely between correspondents and proceeded without edi- 
torial pronouncement. Russel of course had been superseded. 
probably by James Miller, a fact which may account for lack 
of editorial interest. Indeed, the paper appears on the surface 
to be neutral, giving equal advantage to aggressors and re- 
spondents, although the mere publication, even without com- 
ment, of such abusive and bigoted letters as those of E. O., 
A. Z., and D. D.?? can in itself hardly be regarded as a neutral 
act. The truth probably is that during the last months of 
1737 the paper was being kept alive, and no more, and that 
the editors had little concern beyond keeping its columns full. 
At any rate, they showed very little vigor and animation. In 
Russel’s day it would certainly have been in line with the 
Journal’s policy to have backed strongly E. O. and his 
confederates. 

As has already been said, support of the established church 
and the clergy, and attacks on free thinkers and dissenters 
so pervade the Journal as to give it a definite tone, and to 

~ Both A. Z. and D. D. were former contributors. For instance, in 142 
D. D. discourses on loose conversations in coffee houses on political and 
religious subjects, and attacks deistic literature. In 385 A. Z. suggests 


that Whiston in his edition of Josephus is evading his promises to 
subscribers. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 247 


submerge all other religious and theological questions. Still, 
there are a few detached and sporadic letters of religious 
import which are unconcerned with local partisanships. Of 
pure theology apart from deistic controversy there is very 
little, the only notable instance being a series of technical 
arguments (numbers 134, 136, 137, and 138) on free will 
and prescience, and the doctrine of judgments. At times the 
Journal gave space to contributors’ excursions into church 
history. Thus in number 121 there is a short letter in defense 
of “eastward adoration” against what another writer had 
falsely claimed to be the unanimous belief of all the bishops, 
and in number 175 appears a letter from “‘Ecclesiasticus” 
denying Newton’s statement that the veneration of reliques 
of saints originated with St. Anthony, and declaring that on 
the other hand St. Anthony took precautions against having 
his own body preserved as a relique. In number 169 “Philo- 
clerus” recalls that one of Charles I’s last wishes had been 
that the Church should have restored to it its sequestrated 
lands and revenues, and that in spite of his known wish, his 
son had made a grant of £30,000 out of church funds to the 
Duchess of Portland. Queen Anne, however, had restored 
all that was left in her hands, and Philoclerus advises all those 
holding church property to follow her example and return it, 
since their titles are invalid and they themselves guilty of 
sacrilege. For the person of Charles I, the Journal had a very 
considerable reverence, as one might expect from Russel’s 
non-juring principles. It generally called attention to the anni- 
versary of his death by epigrams or by some sort of notice, 
and occasionally waxed sarcastic on the manner in which that 
day was observed. Chiefly it was indignant over the turning 
of what should have been a time of mourning into a holiday. 
In number 266 are verses to the effect that it is kept only by 
those who have to observe it on account of their offices, and 
in number 111 the paper even went to the point of printing 
in parallel columns three sermons on Charles, two of them 
preached before the Lords and Commons respectively, to 
illustrate the art of suiting an address to the sympathies of 


248 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


its audience. It also gave point to the device by an epigram 
the next week—‘‘With your station and audience let your 
doctrine still vary.” 

Of satire on the laxity and shallowness of contemporary 
religious observance the only marked instance—and that is 
really directed against feminine human nature—is in the 
description (numbers 174 and 175) of a conference at Scar- 
borough between ladies of the Church and young Quaker- 
esses, to settle their differences. To show good feeling each 
wore the others’ clothes, it being believed that agreement on 
clothes would settle everything else. In his second installment 
the writer went on to suggest that the pump-room at Scar- 
borough be turned into a chapel of ease on Sundays, where 
the ladies might nominate the preachers, the texts be drawn 
from Dryden, Congreve, and Prior, and the clergy be paid in 
simpers and curtsies. 

Of devout and pious utterance there are also only rare 
instances ; indeed, the Journal is hardly the place to look for 
devotion and piety. In number 230, however, appears “A 
word of reproof to the wicked and of consolation to the 
righteous,’ wherein the writer tells of a vision in which the 
Lord remarked upon the wickedness of England, his favored 
nation, and declared that he would not always withhold his 
rod, although he would still continue to mark with his love 
the faithful. In the same tenor is a dissenting “Call renewed 
from the City to the Country” for the abolition of the Test 
Act. According to its author, any true Christian “‘cannot but 
heartily wish that the Lord’s Supper may no longer be pros- 
tituted to the lusts of men, nor its sacred ends perverted to 
civil views” (number 325). Equally pious is the indignation 
of “A. B.” in number 334 at fraudulent reprints of the Bible. 
There are, he says, strict laws against tampering with earthly 
laws and records, but none against tampering with the utter- 
ances of the Holy Ghost. He describes the publication by a 
“set of pirates” for “filthy lucre’” of installments from the 
Bible, and tells of a corrupt edition called falsely a “History 
of the Old and New Testament,” with stolen annotations 
ascribed to a fictitious S. Smith, D. D. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 249 


Although it cannot perhaps be said that the religious and 
theological material in the Journal is of first rate interest, it 
is of value as illustrating the attitude of the conservative and 
orthodox toward contemporary free thinkers, and as showing 
the special bent of Russel’s mind in the discussion of matters 
pertaining to what was after all, his chosen profession. Rus- 
sel’s regular orthodoxy becomes apparent here as it does in 
all other connections. It is perhaps strange that in view of 
his profession, theology, if not religion, should not have fig- 
ured even more prominently in the Journal. The space allotted 
to it is indeed slight when compared with that accorded to 
medical affairs, and this in spite of the fact that Martyn, a 
medical scientist, early severed his connection with the paper. 
Whatever the reason, medical affairs were, on the whole, 
strongly stressed, and it should be remarked at once that the 
Journal showed the same point of view here that it did, for 
instance, in theology. That is, it was chiefly interested in 
combatting the unorthodox, and in defending regular modes 
of procedure. There was certainly at this time a great deal 
of medical satire. England was suffering, perhaps more than 
usual, from a plague of quacks, and allusions to them in 
print and in cartoons and caricatures were very frequent. In 
this connection one need only recall the numerous represen- 
tations of the quack-doctor in Hogarth, notably in The Three 
Oculists (1726) and in Marriage ala Mode and The Harlot’s 
Progress, and then remember that there were in circulation 
scores of other satirical prints of the same nature.”*A glance 
at the back page of any of the more prominent newspapers— 
the Grub-street Journal, the Craftsman, or Fog’s Journal, 
for instance—is also enlightening, for it was the prime func- 
tion of the back page to trumpet brazenly the praise of the 
most shameless nostrums, especially those for venereal dis- 
orders, and also to announce on occasion the impossible suc- 
cesses of various bone-setters and surgeons. The Journal dis- 
plays exactly the same sort of antipathy toward quacks and 

For an extremely interesting description of the most notable of 


these prints see the British Museum Catalogue of Personal and Political 
Satires, Vol. III, part 1, p. liv ff 


250 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


irregular practitioners as it does toward deists and free- 
thinkers on the one hand, or the small fry in literature, “the 
residents of Grub-street” on the other. Moreover, although 
there is medical discussion of other sorts, it is very slight in 
bulk when compared with the great amount of space devoted 
to undermining the quacks. 

As was the case with the learned or scientific writer in 
other fields, the author of medical works fared but ill at the 
hands of the Journal. At first there was Martyn to pounce 
upon him, exclaim over his ignorance and pomposity, and de- 
clare him a shameless plagiary. And later, after Martyn’s re- 
tirement, reviews in his vein, and it may be of course, from 
his pen, continued to appear occasionally.?? As early as num- 
bers 8 and 18 appear articles signed ‘““Ephraim Quibus, M.D.” 
and ascribed in the Memoirs to Martyn, which may be taken 
as a starting point for the more specific attacks which follow. 
They are directed against medical writers in general and 
detail some of their typical weaknesses. Most of them, says 
the writer, are members of the Grubstreet society; they are 
quite different from their predecessors, who wrote very 
plainly and simply. A modern writer gives first of all an 
account of the family and importance of his patient. He is 
especially addicted to “swelling epithets” and “the digressive 
style,” in which Dr. Turner?‘ is a past master. As an instance 
is cited the case of a suicide, which rambles off into legal 
aspects and avoids the medical ones. Dr. Quibus is also loud 
in praise of the “politeness’”’ of Dr. Turner’s accounts of 

78 At the very end of the Journal’s career, in 411 and 412 was pub- 
lished a criticism of the third edition of Dale’s Pharmacology, signed 
“J. H. M. Philorthos.” The initials in conjunction with the subject 
would suggest Martyn’s authorship. 

*TIn number 31 is to be found sarcastic comment on Dr. Turner’s 
revision of an old translation of Sir Ulrich Hutton’s treatise De Morbo 
Gallico. The Dr. T referred to in 23 is probably Dr. Turner. Apropos 
of a letter from a clergyman telling a lady how her husband had been 
murdered by his physicians, it was decided that the letter ought not to 
be printed, since clergymen were impertinent to pry into the business of 
another profession, and since Dr. T—— objected to the omission from 
the account, of the patient’s name, age, time and place of marriage, and 


“forty like particulars.” After all it was decided that the malice and 
impertinence of the letter were really reasons for publishing it. 





LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE Zon 


cases involving unmentionable parts of the body. He likewise 
distinguishes the “marvelous style’, of which striking ex- 
amples are to be found in the works of one Dr. Nicholas 
Robinson, who tells of a young half-wit who fortunately 
suffered a bump on the head which “shoved his brains right,” 
and of a madman cured by a fall of thirty-six fathoms down 
a well. The second article gives an amusing account of a new 
theory of physic to be developed by the author, based on 
the assumption that “‘all diseases whatsoever owe their origin 
to animalcules.” It is obviously intended as a satire on fads 
in medicine, the pushing of theories to the farthest possible 
limits, and was suggested doubtless by speculation on the 
discoveries of Leeuwenhoek. 

The attacks on specific books give a still clearer conception 
of the weakness of medical writers. Here especially a modern 
reader can sympathize more unrestrainedly with the Journal’s 
usual acid vehemence, for the authors attacked seem to con- 
vict themselves with their own pens of the faults they are 
charged with. In number 41, Martyn presents a specimen of 
“An abstract of an appendix to a system of anatomy” offered 
by a candidate for the Grub Society. It is, Martyn says, 
little more than “a bill of cures performed” and should have 
been given away gratis, like an advertisement. He also quotes 
Vergil’s description of physic as a “mute art” and suggests 
that it must have been on a different footing in those days 
when “physicians and surgeons left their hands and their 
medicines to speak for them.” Still earlier, in number 11, 
Martyn waxes sarcastic over a new Materia Medica by R. 
Bradley. He rejoices that these lectures, which had been 
heard by only three or four students, should at last be printed, 
and in conclusion observes that doubtless the want of such 
lectures has led to the common practice of studying medicine 
abroad. He also selects curious instances of Bradley’s learn- 
ing, such as description of certain stones like marble, out of 
which gold and silver seemed to drop like gum from trees, 
his translation of Terra Sigillata Lemnia as “Cologne’s 
earth” (Martyn states proudly that he had always believed 


RY THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Lemnos and Cologne the same place, in spite of geographies!) 
and his statement, of little medical use, but illustrative of his 
learning, that mummy was to be found in the hecatombs 
[sic] of Egypt. Again, a recent book of anatomy is censured 
in number 279 for its approval of vague, uncertain descrip- 
tions, which the critic calls obvious and within the scope of 
any layman of common sense, and which do not at all merit 
the praise that has been bestowed on them, praise which is 
here cited as a case of “pride and puffing.”’ In some cases the 
attacks on specific books were extended into fairly lengthy 
quarrels. One such is the analysis by “Isaac de Duobus, 
N. M.” in numbers 154 and 155 of The New Dispensary by 
“James Alleyne’. The first charge is directed against the 
booksellers, who are accused of using well-known names 
with a variation in spelling to attract trade; in the present 
case James Alleyne was merely a bookseller’s variation of 
John Allen. The book itself is then cut to pieces: of six hun- 
dred and thirty pages five hundred are transcribed from the 
Method of Dr. Quincy, who is first despoiled and then 
damned for a dunce, and the only notable addition is a Latin 
grammar for young physicians. Moreover, the spoliation of 
Quincy was performed without discrimination—often the 
best was omitted and the poorest kept, and the whole mangled 
and thrown into confusion. In the second installment the dis- 
sector went on to declare further the general confusion of 
the work—‘‘physic and pharmacy dance over hill and dale 
after botany, zoology, and I know not what.’’ Even the index 
made the book more intricate. The compiler is charged with 
citing conflicting authorities and making them “draw in the 
same yoke.” “His simples look awry on each other; his table 
of contents on itself; his index on the book; one part of the 
book clashes with another, and the last with the whole; gen- 
erals fight with particulars; recipes run counter to reason- 
ings; and theory gives the lie to practise.” This attack re- 
ceived the support in number 157 and 158 of two other 
correspondents, “X”’ and “N. J.,” both of whom pointed 
out “notorious errors” in recipes, while N. J. went to the 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 255 


point of declaring of the book, “Should it be in the hands 
of the ignorant and unskillful, it may be of the most fatal 
consequence to the lives of many.” Despite such utterly de- 
vastating criticism, however, Alleyne’s book was not without 
a defender, for the long letter of “de Duobus” received a 
categorical answer at once, in number 156. Its supporter 
insisted that Alleyne was not proved a fictitious name, that 
the publisher had made it clear that the book was not John 
Allen’s, and that in addition it was actually superior to 
Allen’s. He also denied charges of plagiarism and pointed out, 
part by part, the sources on which the work was based. In 
connection with this letter the Journal showed its position by 
publishing a note from Nathan Bailey, denying any knowl- 
edge of or connection with the Alleyne. 

Finally, after a lapse of three months, when any isolated 
letter on the subject had become pointless, the Journal pub- 
lished (number 172, April 12, 1733) a further defense, 
dated January 11, consisting chiefly of an attack on Quincy, 
and asserting that it contained six errors for every one in 
Alleyne. In this encounter the Journal seems to have been 
performing a real service in warning the public against the 
inaccurate product of a purely commercial bookseller. The 
charges against the book are clear and specific; the answers, 
even when flat-footed contradictions, are not convincing. 

A more interesting because more reasonable and straight- 
forward dispute was that over Clifton’s State of Physic, 
beginning in number 201. Here there is apparently an honest 
clash between two systems of medical treatment. ‘“‘A. A.”, 
the attacker, praises Clifton’s style, except for the fault of 
pomposity, but charges him with insisting too strongly on 
his own particular method. He criticises especially Clifton’s 
insistence that very little medicine be given, and his objection 
to it even at the beginning of treatment on the ground of its 
changing the appearance of a disease and hindering correct 
diagnosis. This view, A. A. maintains, insults the rest of the 
medical faculty by its extreme heresy, and varies so far from 
established practice that it gives its professor the appearance 


254 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


of a quack. “He that opposes a little physic at first, does it 
in my opinion as if he had hopes to make a better penny of 
it afterwards.” He also ridicules Clifton’s belief that Galen 
and Hippocrates were masters of “‘fortune-telling’”’, or pre- 
dicting the outcome of a disease. A. A. was effectively taken 
to task two weeks later by “Laertius’’,?° and called contra- 
dictory and illogical in his reasoning, and narrow in his 
unquestioning approval of ipse dixit’s to choke all innova- 
tions. A much more interesting defense of Clifton by “A. 
Z.”’, unfortunately delayed over two months, is notable for 
its remarkably modern point of view. A. Z. praises Clifton 
highly, especially for his warmth and impartial, sincere spirit. 
Clifton had advocated the modern method of keeping a close 
record of a disease day by day, a practice which A. Z. de- 
fends against A. A.’s sneering declaration that it would be 
too laborious except for hospitals. Moreover, he considers 
the administration of as little physic as possible the most 
natural and reasonable practice, and with reference to the 
“fortune telling’ declares it often possible for a skillful 
physician to forecast the outcome of a disease (number 
ZAS): 

More curious than most of these criticisms of books are 
the expositions of contemporary theories of medical treat- 
ment, hygiene, and diet, which crop out from time to time in 
the Journal’s columns. Some of these show a native com- 
mon sense and clear sanity such as mark the letter by “A. Z.” 
just quoted, but most of them are of course amusingly out 
of date and remarkable chiefly for the cocksureness and dog- 
matism of their proponents. Many of these articles are obvi- 
ously by laymen, and laymen who venture to express them- 

** Laertius also has a letter in 256 revealing a natural sympathy with 
Clifton’s general attitude. After observing that as nostrum-mongers are 
mean-spirited wretches, so those who keep real cures to themselves are 
no better, he presents the case of his wife, who had suffered much from 
the “vapors” during pregnancy. The usual prescription of “a cheerful 
glass” and much diversion availing little, and having observed that the 
vapors afflicted only the well-to-do, he had her advised to drink only 


water and small beer, which soon proved a cure. Apparently a man of 
common sense, at any rate. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 250 


selves on such subjects are notoriously cranks and faddists. 
As such, perhaps they are not entitled to the consideration 
due to those whose scientific ideas are examined two cen- 
turies later. At any rate, these contemporary views on quick- 
silver, mad dog bite, inoculation for smallpox, the effect of 
tea and spirits, and so forth, are vivid and interesting, if 
quite useless from a scientific point of view. A reflection of 
the current fad for quicksilver as a specific appears in number 
190: ‘“Bellum Medicorum” by Democritus. The writer con- 
siders the treatment a foolish one, and declares that either 
the quicksilver is not taken into the system at all, or if it is 
absorbed through the lacteals, as is sometimes the case, it 
must produce salivation or even complete mortification, as it 
had with Booth the tragedian. He relates a merry tale of the 
misadventure of a patient who had taken quicksilver, com- 
pares the remedy with Dr. Hancock’s prescription of cold 
water as a universal specific, which had been laughed down 
by Gabriel John, and suggests that mercury might be sold 
as a beverage in the coffee-houses, with the result that ladies 
might become mercury barometers. 

A more serious essay is an attack on inoculation by 
“Democritus” in 197.26 It opens with a weighty statement 
that the practice is of Mahometan origin and can never suit a 
free-born English constitution. Of late, the writer asserts, 
peoples’ eyes have been opened and it declines. If many of 
the noble and wise are for it, so are many against it. Till its 
advocates can justify themselves from the word of God, they 
do nothing. How many lives have been lost by it! And even 
the loss of one alone would be enough to condemn it. If I 
inoculate my son, Democritus continues, and he dies, what 
can I do but, filled with remorse, go mourning to my grave? 
It is said that fewer die of inoculation than of smallpox, but 
—and here his argument becomes more practical—those in- 
oculated are the young and the rich. Among the poor and ill 
cared for the results would be far different. Finally returning 

** Also the author of a letter in 187 describing the extravagance and 


gluttony of a bishop’s installation feast in 1470; and of an article on 
several quacks famous in past generations, in 263. 


256 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


to his pious point of view, he fulminates against “taking the 
Almighty’s work out of his hands.’’ This sermon has ap- 
pended to it a destructive history of inoculation, supposedly 
by Voltaire, and is enforced and supported by an editorial 
note from the pen of Bavius, declaring that there is no occa- 
sion for inoculation, and ridiculing a statement that its effi- 
cacy had been successfully established in England. 

Another subject which seems to have exercised the 
thoughts of many was the danger from mad dogs. The most 
popular remedy seems to have been dipping in salt water, 
but that having failed, according to ““Misokuon” in number 
271, one gentleman having been dipped a dozen times and 
yet having succumbed a month later, it is suggested that the 
protests of country gentlemen, partisans of the dog’s fidelity, 
and so forth, be disregarded, and that all dogs be destroyed 
incontinent. This called forth statements from two other cor- 
respondents. The first notified the Journal (number 272) 
that the patient whose case Misokuon had cited lived seven 
weeks after the dipping, that he never lost his reason, and 
died at last comfortably in bed, not having, as it had been 
said, dashed his brains out against a wall. The second, “Phi- 
laretes” (number 276) replied to Misokuon with a eulogy of 
canine character, claimed the same consideration for the dog 
as would be accorded any other race or class, which he says 
could not reasonably be destroyed because of the misdeeds 
of individuals, and concludes with verses on a lap dog sent 
as a present to a lady. The Journal also printed in number 
385 over the initials ““R. M.” a cure for mad dog bite con- 
sisting of a mixture of liverwort and black pepper adminis- 
tered on four successive mornings in a pint of warm milk, 
and in addition cold baths every morning for a month and 
then thrice a week for a fortnight. To this prescription was 
* attached a note signed “P. L.”’ on the care of the wound 
itself, suggesting that the poison should be extracted and the 
wound cauterized, a process more important in his opinion 
than the use of internal specifics. 

A number of correspondents also reveal a remarkable mix- 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE oe 


ture of common sense and superstition on the subject of 
drink. Often these correspondents are reasonable enough on 
ground where common observation and sense suffice; they 
are, on the other hand, hopelessly lost when they advance into 
fields where specific scientific fact is a requisite; from a mod- 
ern point of view they had no science whatsoever. The matter 
of spirits, especially gin, was in the 1730’s an ever-burning 
question. The drinking of spirits had spread alarmingly, the 
excise on spirits was the subject of incessant political wrang- 
ling, and the attacks on them, of which the most notable is 
of course Hogarth’s horrible print “Gin Lane’, were fre- 
quent. The political aspects of the trade in spirits and the 
excise are very often satirized in the Journal. Except for the 
generally conservative and orthodox attitude of the paper 
and its opposition to the excise, one might expect to find 
more discussion in the Journal of an evil which was clearly 
recognized. The only attack on spirits is in number 360, 
where a correspondent, after congratulating the editor on his 
late refusal to insert “a lewd poem on Punch,” proceeds to 
quote at length from Cheyne on the evils of drink. It is 
Cheyne’s theory that water is the only natural drink and that 
the others should never have been invented.?” Strong drink or 
spirits was formerly, Cheyne says, considered only as a 
medicine, and dispensed by apothecaries; a healthy person 
needs no spirits. It is foolish to say that they cannot be given 
up without danger ; the sudden leaving off of large quantities 
of wine and “flesh meats” has never shown itself injurious. 
Those who desire it, however, may be allowed a pint of wine 
or spirits a day. Those who think liquor aids digestion are 
mistaken; it rather hinders and impairs it—water is the 
only “universal dissolvent’”. It is also a mistake for the 
wealthy to drink strong wines, of which they are apt to be 
fond. Their only excuse can be that they get drunk so much 
the quicker. Cheyne denies, nevertheless, any intention of dis- 
couraging harmless frolics or even an occasional ‘‘dulce 


7 In number 86 appear “verses to be prefixed to the next edition of 
Dr. Arbuthnot’s Book of Aliments.” They ridicule Cheyne’s ideas on diet. 


258 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


furere’’, but he is opposed to the drunkenness which has be- 
come epidemic, and to which many ladies even have come by 
chance. He speaks especially of ‘“‘drams’; these, he says, 
should never be given as a cure for low spirits, which will 
yield rather to “exercise, abstinence and proper evacuations.” 
Punch is next to drams in its evil effects. It is compounded 
of the most heating and drying liquors made by fire from 
fermented juices from southern climates, mixed with the 
juice of oranges and lemons, which have to be imported 
green and are very injurious. There follows the surprising 
statement that oranges and lemons are very harmful anyway, 
even in the West Indies, where people universally get from 
them in punch “nervous and mortal dry belly-aches, cramps, 
and convulsions, which cut them off in a few days.” He 
even extends the ban to malt liquors, which he declares as 
hard for weak constitutions to digest as pork or pease-soup,— 
“The valetudinary, studious and contemplative, must be con- 
tented with a pint of middling light wine a day, one half 
with, and the other without, water.”’ Doubtless to offset such 
disagreeable doctrine the Journal inserted in the Pegasus 
column of the same number an extract from Fuller’s Phar- 
macopia extemporanea in high praise of beer. Among other 
good qualities, it is claimed for beer, 

It cools and moistens the parched membranes of the stomach; 
scoureth salt, acrid, bitter, frothy, slimy filth from off the villae 
and glands, turns it over the pylorus, and leaves a balmy, benign 
litus instead, to keep all supple and easy. . . . The sweeter, softer 


and thicker ale is, the more it suppleth, filleth, and nourisheth. The 
smarter and staler, the more it openeth and detergeth. 


Cheyne’s ideas on the evil of strong drink are likewise derided 
(number 371) by “Paul Puzzle-Query” whose arguments 
smack of trueborn English certainty. Punch, he contends, is 
a Christian drink; why, when Cheyne is attacking alcoholic 
liquors, does he not enumerate cider among the British drinks 
and note the health of the west country people who drink so 
much of it? He ridicules the idea that fire (in distillation) 
makes spirits harmful, any more than it does meat or any 


. LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 259 


other cooked food, and charges Cheyne with gross ignorance 
on the subject of lemons and oranges; the “dry belly ache’, 
he gravely maintains, has declined among the West Indians 
since they began “to drink plenty of small rum punch well 
soured with juice of lemon or orange.” 

Another contribution with a strong patriotic tinge, and all 

the dogmatic assurance of the amateur enthusiast, appears 
in number 379. In it “South Briton” explains at length his 
notions on diet, with special reference to tea. The corner 
stone of his system is the theory that native food is best; the 
British should live on what is grown in their own climate. 
In fact, British hardihood, in his opinion, springs from beef, 
wheat-pudding, and good ale. In tea, however, he sees the 
chief danger to the British constitution, possibly complete 
ruin. After classifying food into the nutritive and the pleas- 
urable (fruits, for instance), he says that tea not only has no 
nutritive value, but rather is harmful and weakening. “The 
first time persons drink it . . . it gives them a pain in the 
stomach, dejection of spirits, cold sweats, palpitation at the 
heart, trembling, fearfulness.” Tea, he adds further, is too 
great an alterative to be taken safely ; it is no longer used for 
consumptions, as it used to be. But it is also bad in another 
way: 
It were yet mischief enough to have our whole populace used to sip 
warm water in a mincing, effeminate manner once or twice every 
day ... out of a nice tea cup, sweetened with sugar, biting a bit 
of nice thin bread and butter . . . this mocks the strong appetite, 
relaxes the stomach, satiates it with trifling, light nick-nacks, which 
have little in them to support hard labor. In this manner the bold and 
brave become dastardly, the strong become weak, the women become 
barren; or if they breed, their blood is made so poor that they have 
not strength to suckle, and if they do, the child dies of the gripes. 

The custom of performing empirical operations on crim- 
inals, which is several times recorded in the news columns of 
the Journal, is the subject of a satirical essay in number 53. 
Herein, apropos of an operation on the drum of the ear by 
Dr. Cheselden,?* Martyn offers many suggestions as to the 


*The Journal reprinted in 55 from the Daily Courant a defence of 
this operation of Cheselden’s. It is said that Cheselden hopes by perfor- 


260 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL e 


possibilities of such a practice, apparently with the intention 
of laughing it out of existence. In view of his usually scien- 
tific and scholarly point of view, his attitude is somewhat 
unexpected, although the conservative trend of the paper 
might naturally oppose it to such experimentation. 

A good instance of the Journal's disagreeable attitude 
toward any serious discussion of a liberal nature appears in 
its editorial comments on an article in number 103 attack- 
ing priests for their interference with medical discoveries. 
This article, which the writer explains had been suggested 
by current attacks on inoculation for smallpox, lists a num- 
ber of supposedly parallel cases from history. He mentions 
the opposition to bleeding in pleuretic cases, introduced by 
Peter Brissot in the sixteenth century, which the priests, in 
an appeal to Charles V, had denominated “mortal, impious, 
and heretical’; to the medical use of antimony, discovered 
by a monk who by chance gave it to some hogs, and noting 
the effects, proceeded to experiment on his colleagues, many 
of whom died (hence the name anti-moine) ; and to quinine, 
whose use had been called a mortal sin by a “pert, prag- 
matical priest.’”’ The Journal, or doubtless Russel,?® while 
it could hardly help but rejoice at such instances of human 
prejudice and bad judgment, was nevertheless irritated by 
the attack on priests. It takes out its irritation by declaring 
that priests are no worse than doctors, and waxes sarcastic 
on the author of the letter. It asserts that members of both 
professions are “pert and pragmatical”, try to make their 
professions mysterious, “and equally endeavor to get num- 
bers and noise on their side.” 

The paper’s scorn for anything new or at variance with 
established principle is generally harsh and repellant. In its 
satire on quackery, and its consistent campaigns against sev- 


ating the drum to restore hearing to those whose drum is diseased, and 
an analogy is drawn with “couching” for cataract. Furthermore, it is 
hoped that the operation will not be very painful, since the drum consists 
of a very thin skin. Yet if it does prove extremely painful, who is there 
more suitable to bear the pain than a condemned criminal? 

® The comment is not reprinted in the Memoirs; hence its authorship 
is conjectural, although the manner is certainly typical of Russel. 


Avia OLOGY AND WEDICIN E 261 


eral irregular practitioners, however, its fierce bitterness was 
beyond a doubt put to a very good use. The unspeakable 
fraternity of brazen quacks who infested England at this 
period, and whose measure may be taken from their own 
contemptible advertisements, merited richly all the abuse 
they received in the Journal and elsewhere, and in destroying 
or stunting their mushroom reputations and killing their 
credit with the people the Journal was doing the country a 
valuable service. It should be remarked nevertheless that 
consistently from 1730 to 1738 the Journal carried on its 
back page without any apparent twinge of conscience the 
advertisements of many of these nostrum-mongers. Indeed 
many of its own advertisers, such as Worm-Powder Moore 
and the purveyor of the famous Anodyne Necklace, were 
frequently held up to ridicule. It is hard to say exactly what 
were the relations between editors, printers, and advertisers, 
but on the whole it would seem that the printer, who was 
legally responsible for the paper in cases of libel and 
the like, also filled up extra space with what advertising 
matter he could get. Certainly the papers of the period con- 
tinually surprise one by calmly displaying advertisements of 
medicines, books, and pamphlets at utter variance with the 
policies expressed in their editorial columns. Seemingly the 
editors or “‘writers’’ of the paper, as they are called, had 
little or nothing to do with the advertisements, and in many 
cases advertisers do not seem to have identified the persons 
responsible for the ‘editorial’? pages with those responsible 
for the advertisements. At any rate they often advertised 
in papers where they were bitterly and consistently at- 
tacked.*° It is hard to conceive of a modern paper carrying 
advertisements of a patent medicine against which it was 
conducting a campaign, or, for that matter, of an advertiser 
who would give it the chance to do so.*! 


° The only exception noted in the case of the Journal was the with- 
drawal of an advertisement of two punch-houses in retaliation for the 
Journal's refusal to publish as a contribution “a lewd poem on punch.” 
(See 360.) For the Journal’s refusal to print for pay a news item favor- 
able to Joshua Ward, see post, p. 285. 

* For a few among many note the following from the Journal’s back 
page :—“Mrs. Elizabeth Knell . . . still continues to perform great cures 


262 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


From its very beginning the Journal is full of anti-quack- 
ery. In general articles, in sarcastic comments on news items, 
in satiric poems and epigrams, and especially in extended and 
continuous assaults on notable quacks, it was actually trying 
to open the eyes of the public to a very real menace. The 
satirical use of Worm-Powder Moore in Pope’s campaign 
against James Moore-Smythe,®” the frequent puns on the 
Anodyne Necklace, and Woolstonian interpretations of 
quacks’ achievements have already been spoken of. Appar- 
ently its columns were always open to an effective assault on 
quacks or to any damaging evidence against them. The 
range includes humorous squibs like the sardonic comment 
(number 45) on an apothecary’s hanging himself, “I wonder 
the apothecary would choose to die by a paltry anodyne 
necklace, value 4 d., when there was (no doubt) so much 
poison ready prepared in his shop,’ or the letter from 
“Teague” (number 105) saying that he had never believed 
the advertisement that the children of the King of France 
had all cut their teeth on the Anodyne Necklace, but that 
recently he has acquired more faith in it. He relates the 
story of a woman of one hundred and twelve, Jane Hobbs 
by name, who had lost all her teeth and had to live 
on soft food. She took to the necklace and within three 
months’ time “cast her old stumps and has now got a new 
set of teeth, as good as ever she had in her life. . . .” But 
at the other extreme from such a parody of the absurd claims 
made for what was probably a comparatively harmless im- 
posture, are more serious revelations. For instance in num- 
ber 268 is published “a true copy of a bill for physic given 
to a child of seven years old for the space of five weeks, 
by a horse farrier who . . . now works at hedging.” This 
“doctor” had got a diploma of some sort from a court at 
in the dropsy, of both sexes and of all ages” (she was a steady advertiser 
during the first years) ; “Dr. Godfrey’s General Cordial,” “The original, 
inestimable, angelical electuary,” “Dr. Newman’s famous anti-venereal 
pill,’ and “Dr. Rock’s Tincture for the stone and gravel” (Dr. Rock 


was continually satirized in the Journal). 
** See ante, Chapter ii. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 263 


Canterbury, and upon refusal of payment recovered legally 
£31 10 s. for debt and costs. The bill, which is a long 
and pretentious one, contains among other items twenty-one 
purges and “thirty papers of powder.’’ Rapacity in another 
connection is also exposed by “Philopauperis” in number 
365,—that of the irregular men-midwives who demanded 
even of the poor a fee of five guineas, even though the 
patient were dead or safely delivered before their arrival. 

A number of articles against quackery in general are to 
be noted. Of these the most interesting in its revelation of 
contemporary conditions is one by “Aesculapius” (number 
205), according to whom the quacks were so successful in 
taking the bread out of the mouths of regular practitioners 
as to discourage young men from becoming physicians. 
“Many quacks swarm in every place, whose bills are daily 
pressed into people’s hands, as they pass along the streets, to 
invite them to their destruction. And at the same time our 
newspapers are filled with pocky advertisements. .. .” 
Aesculapius further maintains that the regular surgeon de- 
pends chiefly on venereal patients, ‘‘and is hard put to it to 
get his bread, whilst those ignorant, detestable rascals, the 
quacks, . . . loll at ease, and live in plenty upon the sins of 
the people.’”’ He also includes in his attack the minor species 
of bone-setters and blood-letters, the first of whom, he says, 
work great cures by pronouncing every case either a frac- 
ture or dislocation, thus securing great credit for remarkable 
cures; while the second, who know nothing of the anatomy 
of the arm, fail to do more harm only through fear and a 
realization of their ignorance. Bavius’ remarks upon this 
letter, although in the main they support it with irony, are 
distinctly tinged with his characteristic perverse humor, 
which cannot resist the opportunity of subtle thrusts at the 
regular practitioners as well as the quacks. He suggests that 
possibly the quacks are doing a good work after all, in case 
the population is too large, and that perhaps something might 
be done to increase the number of venereal patients to pro- 
vide for the regular surgeons, though some of the latter 


264 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


have actually thought quacks good for business, as reducing 
patients to extremities. He also demands ironically why 
young men should not be brought up as sowgelders and 
barbers, since these do so well; objects to Aesculapius’ 
strictures on assurance and impudence, which adorn, or at 
least make up for, a lack of talent; and hopes that Parlia- 
mentary regulation of quacks may be avoided, since such a 
measure would hinder the writing of Grubstreet medical 
books and cut down the advertising in the newspapers. 

“Democritus” contributed to number 263, apropos of the 
scandal over Ward, the greatest of all the fraternity, the 
history of several earlier quacks of note—including Dr. Tom 
Saffold, the heel-maker, Sir Will Read, ‘“‘“mountebank, oculist 
and sworn operator for the eyes,” “honest Roger Grant, the 
tinker”, Dr. Hancock, whose cure depended entirely upon 
cold water and stewed prunes, and several others. 

Still another correspondent, ‘““Machaon’’, in numbers 278 
and 279, considers quackery the particular fad of the present, 
like the religious mania of ninety years earlier, or the South 
Sea bubble of 1720, and contends that it should be curbed 
by law. He cites common law on the subject of unlicensed 
practice, points out that a quack who loses a patient is guilty 
of felony at least to the degree of manslaughter, and recalls 
the cases of several irregular physicians in past times who 
had been convicted under Act of Parliament. His instances, 
however, bearing dates as far afield as 1589 and 1602, would 
lead one to suspect that quacks of the 1730’s had little to 
fear from such statutes, and were left undisturbed by legal 
process. 

Such general criticism of quackery is indeed mild and 
weak when compared with the more practical attacks on in- 
dividuals. Of the various impostors mentioned first and last 
in the Journal, the name is legion, but out of the press are 
to be distinguished especially the great Joshua Ward, and 
to a less degree Dr. Taylor, the oculist, and Mrs. Mapp, the 
bone-setter. To these may be added also the “Mad Doctor”, 
who was the subject of a brief controversy toward the end 


LAW, VAEOLOGY AND MEDICINE 265 


of the Journal’s career. Ward was undoubtedly the arch- 
quack of the time; his fame and following were enormous. 
Taylor was not properly a quack, but rather, as the Journal 
was careful to point out, a regular surgeon who reduced his 
profession to a commercial business. As for Mrs. Mapp— 
“the female bone-setter’”’—her status is clear enough. The 
attacks on this disreputable crew were made for the most 
part during the last three years of the Journal’s career; war- 
fare on Ward, beginning late in 1734, was almost con- 
tinuous until the end of 1737; and the campaigns against 
Taylor, Mrs. Mapp, and the Mad Doctor also took place 
during these latter years. 

The brief campaign against the Mad Doctor is to be 
found in numbers 383, 384, 387. His assailant, “Jack the 
Giant Killer”, after congratulating the Journal on its war 
against quacks and irregular practitioners, repeats the ad- 
vertisement of the Mad Doctor to cure any kind of mania 
or lunacy gratis if allowed the use of the patient’s name in 
recommendations. Jack derides this offer and says he is 
willing to take oath that the cure consists of huge and care- 
less doses of stibium, “a Herculean remedy”. He cites in- 
stances of the disastrous use of stibium and insists that a 
regular physician always records his failures and never pre- 
tends to universal and complete success. He calls special 
attention to the promise “to perform a complete cure in all 
cases of this sort, from the highest mania to the lowest 
melancholy in less than three weeks’ time.’’ He was vigor- 
ously answered the next week by “The Advertiser’’, that is, 
the Mad Doctor himself, who turned his anger against the 
Journal, which he calls “a common public canal to con- 
vey private scandal about the town,” and which he re- 
primands for publishing so violent an attack without investi- 
gation. He then turns to the letter itseli—‘‘a heap of low, 
foul-mouthed, commonplace scurrility.” The antimony he 
declares no remedy at all, since even in considerable doses 
it has no effect on the system. He claims a regular medical 
education and asserts a willingness to justify himself further 


266 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


whenever necessary. The Grub editors promise him the de- 
ference due him whenever he produces better proof of his 
regularity. The Giant Killer returned to his guns in number 
387, asking the Mad Doctor to give his name and address 
(not one at a coffee-house), as a better way to introduce a 
real cure than an anonymous advertisement. He also declares 
stibium to be glass of antimony, a powerful drug, and not 
mere antimony. The editors explain in their Pegasus column 
that not so much of this controversy would have been ad- 
mitted except for the attack on the Journal itself. They take 
occasion, as often before, to deny the charge of scandal, and 
fail to see any “indecency, dishonesty or immorality” in 
having given space to the original attack. Both writers, they 
insist, are unknown to them, and they serve notice that they 
will print no more effusions on the subject except for pay. 

Mrs. Mapp seems to have enjoyed a comparatively brief 
vogue, at least in the metropolis, and in fact must have been 
regarded as hardly worthy of continued notice. The tone of 
the Journal toward the “female bone-setter” is almost alto- 
gether one of broad personal ridicule, as though her ab- 
surdity were to be taken for granted. The first of a series 
of allusions to her beginning in number 350 consists, how- 
ever, of a wail from one Thomas Barbour, tallow-chandler. 
He resents industriously circulated reports that he has been 
greatly benefited by a certain female bone-setter, and invites 
anyone who wishes to come and see his leg, to judge her 
performance, and decide to whom he owes his present un- 
happy confinement to his bed or chair. Some conception of 
the lady’s fame is also afforded (number 351) by notices 
from the press that Mrs. Mapp’s plate of ten guineas offered 
for a race at Epsom had been won by a mare called Mrs. 
Mapp, and also that the celebrity’s husband had returned to 
her and had been kindly received. There is also a squabble 
(numbers 356-359) over the production of a play at Lin- 
coln’s Inn Fields at Mrs. Mapp’s request, and the consequent 
advertisement that she had concurred in the applause. One 
“A. B.” points out that as she is not a person of quality or 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 267 


taste, he fails to see the importance of her concurrence, or 
any compliment in it to the play or the actors. Further he 
makes bold to suggest that she had seen the play at the re- 
quest of the performers, and advises the manager to add her 
to the attraction of his raree-show and advertise that she 
may be seen there alive. This drew a wordy, confused reply 
signed “C. D.”, evidently from someone in the management 
of the theater, fired with indignation at A. B.’s insults to 
Mrs. Mapp and the managers, to which A. B. replied with 
reiterations and answers to various special charges.** 
Notices such as these would indicate that the Journal 

regarded Mrs. Mapp merely as a vulgarly absurd and ridicu- 
lous figure, beneath serious notice. Toward Taylor and 
Ward, on the other hand, its attitude was quite different. 
Both had to be taken seriously. Taylor was a regular surgeon 
who was unashamed to resort to a most blatant campaign of 
advertising or puffing to work up such a practice that his 
progress from place to place throughout the country took 
on the proportions, to judge by his advertisements, of an 
imperial triumph. And Ward, though plain quack, acquired 
by equally effective trumpeting an even more astounding 
and disastrous reputation as a worker of miraculous cures. 
An ironic epigram in number 361, does not, apparently, 
exaggerate the popular credulity and blind faith in Ward— 

In this bright age three wonder-workers rise 

Whose operations puzzle all the wise. 

To lame and blind, by use of manual flight34 

Mapp gives the use of limbs, and Taylor sight. 

But greater Ward, not only lame and blind 

Relieves, but all diseases of mankind 

By one sole remedy removes, as sure 

As Death by arsenic all disease can cure. 
In dealing with Taylor and Ward, the Journal has, as 
always, continual recourse to derision, yet it also does both 
of them the honor to discuss more or less scientifically and 
seriously the cases which they offer as claims to distinction. 

* For a description of several cases treated by Mrs. Mapp, see Hook- 


er’s Miscellany, 190 ff. 
* Slight, z.e. sleight? 


268 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


In the case of Taylor, moreover, the Journal showed more 
fairness than usual in dealing with impostors or puffers. In 
number 362 “R. S.” denounced Taylor as a quack, cited a 
case of blindness due to one of his operations, and urged the 
Journal to expose him. The editors, however, rebuked “R. 
S.” sharply. They pointed out that Taylor was not a quack, 
but only a puffer, a role in which the Journal had frequently 
exposed him, and they declared the reports of his blinding 
people to be absolutely without foundation. They also pub- 
lished in the next issue a defense of Taylor, including his 
various qualifications, together with an editorial account of 
a free hospital for the poor he intended to establish.*° 

As the editors reminded R. S., frequent notice of Taylor 
had been taken in their columns, and his reputation as a 
puffer must have been well established among their regular 
readers. More than a year before had appeared (number 
293) satiric directions for the ready composition of a treatise 
on the diseases of any part of the body, suggested by Dr. 
Taylor’s Treatise on the diseases of the immediate organ of 
sight. The writer, “J. T.’?® recommends the listing of as 
many variations and combinations of symptoms as possi- 
ble, and suggests a search for underlying causes in the 
obstruction, inflammation, dilatation, constriction, etc., of 
arteries, veins, nerves, fibres, etc. ; the coagulation, acrimony, 
concretion, extravasation of blood, lymph, spirits, etc., to be 
applied in as many combinations as necessary. It would 
doubtless, he continues, be helpful to quote frequently, 
especially from Hippocrates and Galen, and to present a 


*° Horace Walpole referred to Taylor as a “mountebank,” in a letter to 
Mann, January 9, 1755. His absurd lectures on the eye, (“the immediate 
organ of sight’”!) are described in a letter from John Palmer to Dr. 
Ducarel, January 4, 1747, the writer having heard them at Northampton 
(Nichols, VIII, 399-401). The date would indicate that Taylor was still 
flourishing, a good example of that most robust of all hardy perennials, 
the quack or the mountebank. Nichols also prints the full title, which 
runs into several hundred words, of The History of the Travels and 
Adventures of Chevalier John Taylor: Ophthalmiator, as likewise a 
description of a print of Taylor lecturing, with an ode attached, “Hail, 
curious Occulist” (Nichols, VIII, 410, and IX, 696). 

*° Possibly Russel. It appears in the Memoirs that he sometimes used 
these initials. 


LAW; THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 269 


table of the parts of the body, with their diseases visible and 
invisible, as many as there is occasion for. He asserts that 
Dr. Taylor, who furnishes the model, shows a noble con- 
tempt for those diseases of the eye whereof Nature has fixed 
the boundaries and characters, and brings forth, out of the 
inexhaustible fund of his imagination, a new set of dis- 
tempers never before heard of. As other useful means to 
help one up the hill of Fame without knowledge, “J. T.” 
recommends university degrees, loquacity, contemptuous 
silence, formality, gravity, dealing in the wonderful and the 
mysterious, splendid attire, and so on. In somewhat later 
issues (numbers 303 and 307), sport is made of Latin verses 
attached to a mezzotint of Dr. Taylor, and a long puff of 
his new operation for cataract is reprinted, as well as an 
account of an “artificial pupil” which restored sight to a 
patient blind for twenty years. Notice is also taken of his 
presentation at court, and of other honors. These puffs were 
evidently reprinted to serve as targets, for ‘“Peter Queer” 
(numbers 310 ff.) tears them to shreds, showing that Dr. 
Taylor has nothing new to offer his profession, and as for 
the artificial pupil—what does that mean? Taylor found a 
champion, however, in “Tim Justice”, who accused Peter 
Queer of wanting both wit and manners, declaring that no 
matter how much fun might be poked at the surgeon and 
his talk about cataracts, it was obvious that he had made a 
good many people see. A month later, the Journal again took 
notice of Taylor’s activities, this time by reprinting the 
preface to his treatise on the eye, and in conjunction with it 
a second blast from Peter Queer. The tone of Taylor’s 
preface certainly gives ground for the charges brought 
against him. He speaks of his long investigations, of his 
new method of operating for cataract, and claims the dis- 
covery of a cure for several types of gutta serena, heretofore 
considered incurable. He asserts, however, that he intends to 
make all his discoveries public, as he intends to keep no 
secrets. Peter Queer’s letter, to which is attached a warning 
that if he wishes to get more letters printed he must make 


270 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


himself known to the printer, is chiefly an attack on Taylor’s 
claims to preéminence as a specialist in diseases of the eye, 
although his abject flattery of the Queen in his dedication is 
also held up to scorn. According to the correspondent, Taylor 
had taken all the valuable part of his book from the work 
of the French surgeon Petit, mangling and obscuring the 
material in the process. One instance is cited in which Taylor 
had copied wrongly and carelessly from Petit, and had never 
discovered his mistake. This drew an immediate answer 
signed “J. Taylor”, minimizing the error Peter Queer had 
noticed, and insisting that an operation Peter Queer had said 
was like one of Petit’s, was in fact entirely unlike it, Petit’s 
being impracticable. 

Apparently these sporadic attacks had little effect on 
Taylor’s popularity, for the newspapers continued to publish 
accounts of his successful operations for cataract?’ and to 
tell the tale of his triumphal progress through England_be- 
sieged by crowds of patients, until the time of his departure 
for France to attend “a person of great distinction.” Further 
emphasis on Taylor’s advertising methods appears in a letter 
in number 346. The author, ‘Fair Play’, who declares him- 
self a layman and denies ever having had any relations with 
Taylor, recounts the case of one of Taylor’s patients, who a 
few days after the operation lost successively the sight oi 
both eyes. The surgeon’s fee is given as five pounds. Fair 
Play, in what might seem an excess of moderation, avers 
that he does not blame Taylor so much for the failure of 
the operation as for the puffing which leads incurables—the 
patient in this case was seventy years old—to believe they 
can be cured. 

Six months later Taylor was satirized as a member of 
“The Trumpeters Club or Society of Puffers” in which “the 
present honorary professor is the worshipped Dr. T—r, well 
known for his various puffs all over the kingdom.” The 
most vigorous and effective assault on the oculist, however, 
came as a final shot in number 377. After emptying the vials 


7 See, for instance, 331. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE Zh 


of his scorn on Taylor for his puffing and his continual talk 
of what he is about to do for the public, the writer details 
the history of his treatment of M. Crozat of Paris, an ac- 
count emanating supposedly from Crozat’s regular attendant, 
Dr. Biat, who was by appointment surgeon to the king of 
France. It is asserted that a shining equipage and the good 
offices of the much impressed Dutch ambassador secured 
him access to the patient, and that the operation was a total 
failure, the eye being obliterated as a result of it. 

When regarded in the mass, these attacks on Taylor seem 
considerable, but it should be noted that they came at fairly 
long intervals and that there was no concerted bombardment 
of a sort to interfere greatly with a well-established popular 
reputation. Indeed, in spite of the fact that Taylor was 
drawn once to reply in his own defense, it seems hardly 
probable that his business as a remover of cataracts was much 
interfered with. After all, the charge of puffing or of low 
professional ethics in the matter of advertising would proba- 
bly seem to the public mind a negligible one. The Journal, it 
should be remembered, although it did print a few accounts 
of unsuccessful operations, refused contemptuously to brand 
Taylor as a quack, and reduced to the level of stuff and non- 
sense the rumors that he was going about blinding people, 
rumors which with a little judicious circulation would doubt- 
less have taken most of the triumph out of Taylor’s widely 
heralded tours. 

The case of Joshua Ward was quite different. Here the 
Journal had to deal with a pure quack, monstrously influ- 
ential, and guilty of far more than commercialism and lack 
of professional dignity. Ward was an ignoramus who ap- 
parently had no scruples whatsoever in administering fright- 
ful doses of violent drugs to his equally ignorant patients, 
and who had a genius for advertising which made Taylor’s 
efforts in that direction seem the pink of propriety. The 
accounts of Ward’s methods and the results of his treatment 
are enough to make a twentieth century reader gasp. Even 
a professed believer in the incurable gullibility of the human 


272 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


race could hardly understand the astounding success which 
attended his campaigns in spite of the harm he did.?® Here 
the attitude of the Jowrnal was unmodified and unrestrained. 
It stopped at nothing in its attack on Ward. The effectiveness 
of its attack, moreover, was clear. When it asserted over and 
Over again savagely and bitterly that Ward brought in his 
train nothing but death, paralysis, epilepsy, and other 
horrors, and published case after case with the most revolt- 
ing detail, the public took heed, and for a time at least 
Ward’s practice was reduced to a shadow of its earlier 
prosperity. 

When once undertaken late in 1734, the campaign against 
Ward was almost continuous during the remaining three 
years of the Journal's life. Indeed, Ward’s “Pill and Drop” 
had devoted to them more space than any other subject in 
the paper’s history. The first shot against Ward was fired by 
“Misoquackus” (number 257) in an analysis of a widely 
circulated testimonial given Ward’s remedies by the Lord 
Chief Baron, describing the case of a patient whose ailment 
had yielded to them after “all which the regular practice of 
medicine could suggest had been tried unsuccessfully.” The 
writer does not undertake to disclose the weakness of the case 
here presented, but instead declares his intention of pointing 
out instances where Ward has caused paralytic disorders, 
where death has quickly ensued upon, or been hastened by, 
his medicines, and of proving that the nostrum is a real 
poison, of a “tribe” he recognizes. He then proceeds to de- 
scribe two cases of paralysis caused by the Pill and Drop. 
In one, a robust, middle-aged man, having been greatly dis- 
turbed by the Pill, was directed by Ward to take more—a 
treatment resulting in bad eruptions, paralysis of the lower 
jaw, swelling of the wrists and insteps, and trouble with the 

88 Ward is described in Nichols, III, 329, as “the celebrated quack who 
first began to practice physic about 1733; and combated for some time 
the united efforts of wit, learning, argument, ridicule, malice, and jeal- 
ousy, by all of which he was opposed in every shape that can be sug- 


gested. After a continued series of successes he died December 11, 1761, 
at a very advanced age.” 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 7a) 


eyes and ears—a state of affairs finally corrected by the 
regular physicians. Ten cases of death are also charged to 
the use of the medicines as remedies for everything from 
a rash to consumption. In nearly all cases their use was fol- 
lowed by the most violent disturbances of the digestive tract 
—“it vomited and purged her times without numbering” ; “it 
vomited her thirty-four and purged her twenty-two times.” 
Misoquackus, on a basis of such cases, argues that the Pill 
and Drop are poison, since they are so very small and yet so 
powerful, as violent as a like amount of arsenic or sublimate. 
He further describes five preparations of antimony, all of 
which produce the exact effects of Ward’s remedies. Of one 
(Crocus Metallorum, or Liver of Antimony) he says it is 
so violent that “it is seldom prescribed but to mad people and 
in such stubborn disorders where the fibres require very 
forcible shocks,’ and of another, ‘“Mercurius Vitae,” that it 
was the basis of “the Purging Sugar Plumb,” a nostrum 
which had destroyed many children. Finally he comes to the 
conclusion that the Pill and Drop were made from one or 
more of these. 

The Journal evidently published this letter with the inten- 
tion of opening a lively quarrel, for in number 259 Bavius 
stated frankly that the editors had expected Ward to reply, 
either in the Journal or another paper, but that since he had 
taken no notice they would go on with the campaign against 
him, publishing cases where “indiscriminate use has proved 
very fatal to abundance of persons.”’ The same issue has a 
communication from a physician signing himself ‘“Amicu- 
lus” explaining why Ward’s pills are inactive for a time 
and then suddenly develop a most remarkable energy, by 
the ingenious theory that they are coated over by slime in 
one of the folds of the stomach lining. He also attacks the 
Pill and Drop because of their prescription as a panacea for 
everything from hysterics to scurvy, “pox’’, ague, or phthisis, 
even in cases where the weakness of the patient made violent 
medicine especially dangerous. 

A week later the whole first page and half the second were 


274 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


given up to an abridgement of an attack on Ward by Dr. 
Daniel Turner. The editors censure Turner for not mention- 
ing them or giving the Journal credit for material he had 
taken from it, but undertake nevertheless to give his article, 
published as a “Letter to Dr. Jurin,’*® space in their 
columns. Turner likewise considers Ward’s principle to be 
antimony, and not, as some had thought, mercury, and recalls 
the fact that several earlier panaceas had been similar in 
appearance and action. After admitting the possibility of the 
Pill’s value in some cases, he declares that it must be avoided 
by the weak and by sufferers from rupture, and that the 
various diseases in which the greatest claims for it were 
made, notably gout, rheumatism, scurvy, palsy, lues, king’s 
evil, and cancer, are of such nature that the action of the 
Pill would be especially disastrous in their treatment. Dr. 
Turner also cites cases of cancer of the breast, paralysis, and 
other diseases, where resort to Ward’s remedies had been 
fatal. Of one such he says, ““There has been a paralytic case 
industriously concealed, and notwithstanding all the applica- 
tion and interest I could make I have been denied admittance 
to the widow of the deceased.”” He ends with a conjectural 


° The drop and pill of Mr. Ward considered, as well in respect to 
their composition as their operation and effects. Wherein, as there ts 
great reason to believe, the genuine receipt of both. In an epistle to Dr. 
James Jurin, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal 
Society. From Daniel Turner, of the same College of Physicians in 
London (London, 1735). The Journal had earlier attacked Turner for 
his pompous and conceited style as a medical writer. (See ante.) An- 
other attack on Ward which is perhaps worth noting is An essay for 
abridging the study of physic. To which is added a dialogue (betunrt 
Hygeia, Mercury and Pluto). Relating to the practice of physic, as it is 
managed by a certain illustrious society. As also an epistle from Usbek 
the Persian to J— W—d, Esq. (London, 1735). It is dedicated “To the 
antacademic philosophers, to the generous despisers of the schools, to 
the deservedly celebrated J— W—d, J— M—r, and the rest of the numer- 
ous sect of inspired physicians.” The tone of this pamphlet is indicated 
by the statement that the student must have an “inexhaustible fund of 
assurance, that cardinal virtue.’ Moreover, “a little sense would not be 
amiss ... [but] impudence alone will do. ” The “doctor” should have at 
least enough Latin to show off, should be apprentice to a country apothe- 
cary and learn to make pills and give clysters, and should study anatomy 
enough to know, for example, whether the stomach lies in the abdomen 
or thorax. According to Nichols, II, 307, the author was Dr. John 
Armstrong. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 275 


formula of the Drop as butter of antimony and cream of 
tartar, and the Pill as “glass of antimony”’, formed with the 
Drop into small pills, each of a grain in weight.*? Turner’s 
statement that the Pill was not mercurial was corrected the 
next week by ‘“Philagathus” in a statement that butyrum 
antimonii was a preparation of antimony and corrosive sub- 
limate, and that in addition he knew of a case where the Pill 
had led to complete salivation. 

These attacks finally drew replies, and the editors could 
congratulate themselves on having started an inexhaustible 
controversy, which before it was finished developed all sorts 
of ramifications, legal, moral, and scientific. The first letter 
in favor of Ward—according to the editors the only one they 
had received—was apparently from a Quaker with a strong 
prejudice against the medical profession. “Obadiah Anti- 
clysterpipus”’ asserts in biblical phrase that Ward had helped 
him, together with many others, when the regular doctors 
could not. As for the talk of poison, he reminds Ward’s 
detractors that opium, mercury, and other such drugs, are 
not poison if wisely administered, and so it is, he says, with 
Ward’s pills. To the charge that children were given adult 
doses, he replies somewhat confusedly, ‘“‘Hold thy peace, thou 
babler, you are condemned out of your own mouth, for do 
you not often say, ‘Such a thing is so innocent it may be 
given to a child’?”’ He also sweeps aside the deaths for which 
Ward had been held responsible in the Journal, as due to 
inevitable causes, and not to Ward. At last, in number 262, 
Ward himself addressed to the Journal the reply they had 
hoped for a month earlier. After giving his personal opinion 
of Misoquackus, who he says he has been told is an apothe- 
cary, he proceeds with the ignorant effrontery and assurance 
which characterize his trade, to dilate on the great number 
of incurables who die under the regular practitioners’ hands, 
after expending large sums, and to boast that he has attended 
twenty thousand in the last nine months, and cured many 
whom the physicians had turned away as incurable. He also 


“ The Drop:—Butyr Antim. 311, Crem. Tartar 3iv. 


276 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


produces affidavits in regard to the damaging cases men- 
tioned in the Journal and in Turner’s letter, to show that 
other causes than his treatment contributed to death or that 
the patients took other remedies also, furnished by physicians 
or apothecaries. Some of these affidavits are ridiculously 
thin—mere assertions that the signer believes Ward’s Pill 
had nothing to do with the patient’s death, but others are 
more considerable, as for instance one concerning a waitress 
in a tavern who drank a great deal of brandy and had long 
been in bad health, and another a mistress of an ale house, 
“a gross fat woman” who ate hugely and was obliged “in 
her way of business to drink.” Ward also announces loftily 
that in future he will take no notice of such attacks, that Dr. 
Turner has not guessed the prescription of his medicines 
at all, and that two of the cancer patients whom Turner has 
believed dead are actually alive and in a fair way to recovery. 
In conclusion he points with pride to the decreased death rate 
for the past year, which had, moreover, been a very un- 
healthy one, and thinks his remedies may have contributed 
“not a little”. 

Two weeks later came the Journal’s reply to Ward’s letter - 
in an analysis of his affidavits to show that they avoided 
the issue and were valueless as arguments. The Journal, in 
fact, produced counter-affidavits to the effect that the state- 
ments secured by Ward were false and had never been sworn 
to, tells of Ward’s agents giving bribes to secure affidavits, 
and asks if “J. Lacey”, one of Ward’s witnesses, is Joseph 
Lacey, the bankrupt, “lately arrived from the Bastille at 
Paris,”’#+ 

For the most part, however, the material in the con- 
troversy consisted of accounts of cases, most of them of 
course to demonstrate Ward’s quackery, but some few in his 
favor. In number 264, for instance, “Philanthropos’’ tells 

“Tn 267, the Journal offers a detailed account of one of the cases sup- 
ported on both sides by affidavits. It is alleged that the patient herself and 
every one concerned believed her violent illness due to Ward’s medicines, 


and that the attending physician considered them the real cause of her 
death. 


PAN aE OLOGY, AND MEDICINE 277 


of two cases cured by Ward after they had been given up 
by the doctors, one “a gentleman of ample fortune” cured 
of “tremblings in his hands and excessive headaches,” the 
other a Mr. Haine, formerly so crippled by rheumatism that 
he could not walk, but now “restored to perfect health by 
Mr. Ward’s Pill and Drop.” A year and a half later, in 
number 344, the editors implied in a footnote that one Smith, 
who had become implicated as an agent of Ward, had 
brought the account of these two cases to the printer and 
had paid one and one half guineas for their publication. 
Ward also had access to other papers, notably the London 
Evening Post. One communication (answered categorically 
by “Iatrophilus” in number 266), maintained that Ward 
might be graduated a doctor “‘by the voice of one whole na- 
tion,” that his medicine could not be called dangerous since 
its prescription was unknown, that Ward had been treated as 
a public benefactor in France, that he was very charitable to 
the poor (in answer to which Iatrophilus asks where he got 
his fortune, and says he sells one pill for the cost of thou- 
sands) and finally that he should not be called a quack. 

As one might expect, the Journal made use of its favorite 
weapons of satire and humor to support and vivify its affi- 
davits and accounts of cases. In the Pegasus column (num- 
ber 262) “Isaac Bickerstaff” becomes witty over Ward’s 
statement that he would treat free of charge only those who 
had certificates from their parish, and suggests two forms :— 
“We... do certify that N. N., a poor person belonging 
to the parish of may safely undergo a hundred stools 
and as many vomits without any detriment to the said 
Patish,, and Wie). =.) do hereby certity that N..N.: . . 1s 
fitly prepared to take the pill and drop, having received the 
sacrament according to the Church of England, and received 
ghostly absolution and being in charity with all the world,” 
and suggests as apt for Ward’s use Othello’s lines— 





I would not kill thy unprepared spirit: 
No, heaven forfend, I would not kill thy soul. 


278 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


In the same issue an epigram by “U. C.” offers the Pill and 
Drop as a convenient means of inconspicuous suicide. The 
notoriety Ward had attained is attested by the advertisement 
for Drury Lane (number 265) of “A New Pantomimical 
Entertainment called the Plot; or Pill and Drop . . . Writ- 
ten by a Gentleman of the Temple,’”’ and of a new satirical 
print (number 270) of “Dr. Anti-Money and his brother, in 
their proper attitudes illustrated with suitable decorations.” 
The device of humorous comment on news items was also 
found convenient. A Mr. Hart of Lincoln’s Inn, being dis- 
ordered in his senses, and stabbing his keeper with scissors, 
the Journal remarks, “‘The account seems false that this 
gentleman grew disordered in his senses after taking a cer- 
tain pill; one would rather think he was so before.”*” 

Then suddenly the campaign came to an abrupt halt with 
the notice in number 270 that the Journal’s printer had been 
served with a writ from the King’s Bench for scandalous 
libel on account of the attacks on Ward in numbers 257 and 
264. No more damaging allusions to Ward were printed 
until number 278—a period of eight weeks—when there 
appeared an epigram on Ward’s use of writs to quiet those 
who spread the news of the deaths he caused, and on his at- 
tempts to silence anyone who did not praise him. Four weeks 
later, in number 282, “Dactyl’ poked fun at Ward’s bring- 
ing suit in the King’s Bench as “Joshua Ward, Esq.” and 
then changing to the Court of Common Pleas and becoming 
“plain, downright, honest Joshua Ward.” By the following 
week the editors seem to have regained their courage, for 
they published an analysis by “C. J.” of climatic conditions 
and bills of mortality, apropos of Ward’s statements in num- 
ber 262. “C. J.’ undertook to show that the death rate for 
the year in question was high, though lower than in the 
year before, and that a tabulation of causes of death could 

“” This was doubtless the same Mr. Hart whose case had been described 
in number 267:—Suffering from a slight cold, he had taken Ward’s 
medicines out of curiosity. Ward gave him four pills, of which he took 


two. These proved almost fatal, as he fell into convulsions, and then 
into a coma, and when he began to recover, was for a time nearly blind. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 279 


give Ward little satisfaction. He calls Ward’s statement “as 
romantic, foolish, and self-flattering . . . as any the most 
bare-faced quack ever uttered from his stage.” An illumi- 
nating note on this letter was presented in the Pegasus 
column, to the effect that it had been actually printed for 
publication the preceding February (it was now the end of 
May) “but in the absence of some of our Society was sup- 
pressed by the influence of others; who, being thrown into 
a panic by the noise of Mr. W’s legal pills, in the shaking 
fit let drop this demonstration of the falseness and ridicu- 
lousness of one of his puffs.’ Obviously the reference to 
“our Society” is not to be taken in its usual sense; it seems 
quite clear that the editorial board of the paper in an access 
of timidity thought it expedient to let Ward rest in peace 
for a time. There is also to be caught from these lines a hint 
of dissension among the various editors themselves. The 
authority with which the editor speaks in number 283 might 
lead one to hazard the guess that it was Russel who had 
been absent, and that now upon his return, Ward might 
expect a renewal of warfare. 

At any rate, in the succeeding issue, number 284, was 
published a very clear and succinct account of the Journal’s 
campaign against Ward, and of the victim’s suit for libel, 
although it must be admitted that the Journal’s attitude is 
made out much milder than it really had been. As for the 
suit for libel, the reader is informed that when the case 
came up the Journal’s counsel refused to admit that Ward 
was a gentleman who practiced physic, that he was the 
author or inventor of a pill, or even, without definite proof, 
that he was the seller of a pill. Ward’s counsel then asking 
for a delay, it was granted, and on its resumption, he offered 
to drop the case if an apology were made. Finally, although 
this was refused, ‘‘the original rule to shew cause was dis- 
charged.’ *4 


* Carruthers in his Life of Pope points out that Ward retained as 
counsel Fortescue, a friend of Pope’s, who appealed to Pope for help in 
getting evidence in Ward’s favor from the physicians among the poet’s 
friends. Roberts, one of Pope’s publishers, was a defendant, and Car- 
ruthers finds it amusing that Pope got very little evidence against him 
for Fortescue. 


280 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


During the next year, however, Ward figured in the 
Journal's columns only sporadically. In number 288 “Demo- 
critus” suggests that the present European war be settled 
by giving the soldiers on both sides three of Ward’s pills, 
that side which withstood them best to be declared victorious, 
it being the writer’s belief that such “bloodless slaughter” 
was less harmful and more conducive to peace than the ordi- 
nary kind. Other and more significant comments appeared 
in number 311 and 315. In connection with the attacks upon 
the oculist Taylor, the Journal's printer, Huggonson, in- 
serted an initialled note declaring that Taylor had more 
honor than to deny his own paid puffs, “which one of J. 
Ward’s principal agents did (flatly disowning any knowledge 
or action in the affair) when he was asked about J. Ward’s 
answer and the affidavits he had procured (which this agent 
handed to the press and paid me £1, 11s., 6 d. for their being 
inserted in number 262, against the twelve cases (inserted 
in number 257) which denial and disownment I take this 
opportunity to call on J. Ward or his paid agent to clear 
up if they can—J. H.” Further evidence that the Journal 
had not forgotten Ward, but was still keeping an eye on his 
activities, is offered in number 315. In that issue is quoted 
from the Daily Post Boy the item, ‘We are credibly in- 
formed that Mr. Ward has undertaken to cure the stone by 
dissolving it in the bladder, and without any pain to relieve 
the patient.’”’ To this the Journal retorts: “We are credibly 
informed that a woman who had confirmed herself to be so 
cured of a stone which Mr. Cheselden told her she had, did 
not know him when he went to her to inquire about the 
story.” 

In the middle of 1736, the campaign began again in good 
earnest, quite probably stirred into life by the appearance of 
a pamphlet against Ward, which the Journal found to be an 
excellent weapon. It was the work of an apothecary, Joseph 
Clutton, and was entitled A true and candid relation of the 
good and bad effects of Joshua Ward’s Pill and Drop, Ex- 
hibited in sixty-eight cases. It is quite possible too that 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 281 


the Journal was outraged by reports of Ward’s growing 
fame, for in number 338 it reprinted from the Daily Adver- 
tiser a notice that “Joshua Ward, Esq.” and eight or ten 
cured patients had appeared before the Queen and three 
physicians who had examined them, whereupon the Queen 
had distributed money and congratulated Mr. Ward. This 
the Journal suggested was ‘“‘Mr. Ward’s answer (there being 
no such person as Joshua Ward, Esq.) to all the fatal effects 
of his pill and drop, as represented in the many cases lately 
published.” 

Furthermore, the Journal undertook to investigate the 
“eight or ten” cases of cures, and reported the next week 
that there were seven of them, to be exact, and that none of 
them could really be described as a definite cure, either be- 
cause it was not known what the patient had to begin with, 
or because he still suffered from his original trouble, and 
could maintain at most that he felt a little easier. One of the 
seven cases is described in detail. The patient was “a little 
crooked woman” who said she had had a ravenous wolf in 
her stomach, which caused her to eat two legs of mutton 
raw, one quarter peck of potatoes and two pails of beer at 
one meal, but that on her taking Ward’s medicine the wolf 
“fell down flap into her belly, ever since which she had been 
very well.” The Journal also printed ironic verses on the 
“seven wonderful cures,” making the point that it was 
thought of several patients who were supposed to have been 
relieved of the stone that they still had stone in the bladder. 
Again in number 341 the Journal, in noticing the death after 
a long illness of the Earl of Westmoreland, added the infor- 
mation that the long illness was gout, for which the Earl 
had taken the Pill and Drop, upon which he “fell into a 
bloody flux and died like the late Bishop of St. Asaph.” 

In number 342 the attack became definitely systematic and, 
it must be confessed, somewhat tedious, when the Journal 
opened its columns to Joseph Clutton, the aforementioned 
enemy of Ward, printing communications from him, as well 
as long extracts from his pamphlet. Clutton’s first appear- 


282 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ance in print in the Journal was in a long letter of five 
columns addressed to William Ward, Joshua’s brother, and 
apparently his chief business agent. The two, Clutton and 
William Ward, were now engaged in a controversy over 
testimonials and affidavits; in fact, Clutton’s communication 
is in answer to an open letter by William Ward, and con- 
sists of argument over minute details of visits to certain 
patients, and over the motives and accuracy of the two 
writers. Clutton calculates that if Ward’s accounts are true 
he must make £12,500 a year—and Ward was regularly 
insisting that he gave away to the poor all that he made. 
In much the same strain is another letter by Clutton in num- 
ber 344 in reply to one by John Smith, written, according 
to Clutton, in collaboration with William Ward. Here are 
more arguments over minor details and the matter of ve- 
racity. Clutton, however, declares that he had attended Smith 
in an illness, had given him medicine and told him not to 
take any more of Ward’s remedies. Smith had, on the other 
hand, explained that he must not disoblige Ward, whose 
medicines he sold in considerable quantities, being in fact a 
Ward agent, a statement supported by the Journal in a note 
identifying Smith as a man employed by Ward in earlier 
dealings with it itself. Clutton, indeed, tiresomely perti- 
nacious, pursued his argument with William Ward through 
numerous columns in numbers 346 and 348. 

The Journal also kept up a steady fire of case histories, 
many of them from Clutton’s pamphlet, to give the public 
a true conception of the horrors of the Pill and Drop. 
Clutton relates the case of a patient who took two doses 
of Ward’s pills, and had one hundred and thirty stools, 
with hemorrhages, then a sudden and violent dropsy, and 
died within about ten days of mortification of the bowels. 
Symptoms are described in the most gruesome and revolting 
phraseology. In number 345 appears the description of a 
case of dropsy (number 41 in Clutton’s pamphlet). In con- 
nection with this case it had been stated in Ward’s defense 
that the patient had improved under his treatment, and it is 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 283 


believed would have recovered if he had not taken cold, 
drunk too hard, and left off Ward’s treatment. In reply 
Clutton points out the weakness of Ward’s argument, and 
says the fact remains that the patient died of dropsy, having 
taken Ward’s medicines till they ceased to have any good 
effect. In another case (52) published in the same issue, the 
patient having died after violent purging and vomiting, in 
spite of apothecaries and physicians who were called in, the 
medicine prescribed by Ward was examined carefully. Ac- 
cording to the report it could be resolved into white, yellow 
and blue powders, judged. by witnesses to be white arsenic, 
glass of antimony, and blue smalt. In another case (53) 
published in number 346, a woman had taken one pill and 
one drop for rheumatic pains. This brought on continued 
vomiting and purging for ten or twelve days, till she seemed 
at the point of death. Then, to relieve shortness of breath, 
she was bled ten or twelve ounces, but was so exhausted of 
moisture that “there was not a spoonful of serum separated 
from that quantity of blood.” Nevertheless, after many 
weeks she made a slow recovery. 

Many of the cases show the most reckless prescription of 
medicines by Ward, apparently without any consideration 
of the patient’s disease. In number 349, appears the case, 
contributed by “A. J.” and numbered 55, of a youth who 
took three pills for “venereal eruptions,” and after the usual 
violent symptoms, died in four days. In another instance (56 
in number 350), the patient took Ward’s medicines for 
pimples on the face. The pills having no effect, Ward gave 
him more, saying, “So much the better.’’ The second dose 
produced violent illness and the vomiting of blood. Finally, 
the eruption turned out to be smallpox, and the patient died. 

Another case (61 in number 357) of a still different sort 
is that of a woman with prolapsus uteri who, doctored by a 
neighbor with medicines said to come from Ward, grew 
worse and went to Ward himself. His treatment—powders, 
drops, and one pill—made her much worse, so that she could 
hardly walk. Ward finally told her she had an incurable 


284 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ulcer and dismissed her. Thereupon she went to St. Bartho- 
lomew’s where she was easily cured in the usual way by the 
surgeon Freak. 

In fact, Ward seems to have prescribed much the same 
medicine for everything from rheumatism to smallpox, and 
in the cases reported the chief results appear to have been 
almost invariably “purging and vomiting.” In number 356 
is presented the case of a woman whom Ward gave two 
papers of blue powder, one of which “poisoned” her so that 
she was ill for a month. Apropos of the “blue powder” the 
Journal inserts the note: ““The publishing so much about Mr. 
Ward’s Pill and Drop being made of arsenic and ratsbane 
has in all probability caused him to alter the form, though 
not the nature of his medicine.” 

The Pill and Drop continued nevertheless to be Ward’s 
chief stock in trade, although patients reported being given 
“powders” and even a concoction called “liquid snuff,’** 
which was satirized in a burlesque puff in number 351. 
Herein Ward, who had achieved the title “Restorer of 
Health and Father of the Poor’ is eulogized for his won- 
derful work, sympathized with for his persecution by Clut- 
ton, and credited with seven wonderful cures, of which the 
following is typical:—Alexander Brownsword, discharged 
from his regiment because of leprosy, was cured in ten days 
by a pill each day and by liquid snuffed up his nostrils, and, 
in the best testimonial phrasing, “all his natural faculties 
reduced to their pristine strength and vigor.” 

After the middle of 1736, the Journal gave up its printing 
of case histories, and confined itself chiefly to Ward’s 
manner of securing testimonials and his puffing in general. 
In number 359 appears the detailed affidavit of James and 
Mary Gill, whose child, according to Clutton, had been 
blinded by Ward’s medicines. They here maintain that they 
have been constantly importuned by a man in gray, thread- 

“Prescribed for one M. Rymes of Oxford for deafness. It got down 


his throat and made him very ill, but failed to improve his hearing. He 
reports his case himself in 352. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 285 


bare clothes, who worked in Ward’s shop, to sign affidavits 
denying the truth of Clutton’s statements. Various induce- 
ments had been offered them. Many times they had been 
treated with fish and ale (the accounts and houses are 
named), and her husband, who had been arrested for debt, 
told he would be released and maintained if he would com- 
ply. They were both, as a matter of fact, brought before a 
justice of the peace to swear that the child was blind when 
it was presented to Ward, but both refused. To this was 
appended the editorial note—‘A man in gray threadbare 
clothes went on Friday on a threatening, threadbare errand 
to Mrs. Taylor, whose case was published in our last.” 
Another of Ward’s methods is disclosed in numbers 383 
and 384. In the first the Journal took notice of an item pub- 
lished in several papers to the effect that Ward claimed to 
have cured 8,300 at his hospital, whereas the hospitals of 
St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew together had cured only 
10,297. This item had been brought to the Journal to be 
inserted for pay, but the editors had refused it, being skepti- 
cal of its truth. Still, they declare, unless the regular prac- 
titioners take the trouble to deny it, they will publish it free. 
Apparently no regular physician saw fit to interfere, for the 
next week the advertisement appeared. According to it, 
Ward’s patients 
have been all relieved without the assistance or advice of any phy- 
sician, surgeon, or apothecary, which shows the efficacy of his 
remedies as well as the industry of the giver, who alone is able to 
prepare what is necessary for such members as daily go to him, 
many of them having been turned out of other hospitals as incur- 
able, or given over by regular practitioners, by whom care has been, 
and daily is, taken to spread dreadful accounts amongst the people 
against Ward and his medicines, that few apply to him but at the 
last extremity, and even then if any die, such death is attributed, 
with many aggravations, to his remedies, whilst those who suffer 


under their care are said to die by the violence of the several dis- 
tempers. 


To emphasize their position of the week before, the editors 
announced that this statement had been inserted gratis, and 
that they did not believe it, but that if the physicians were 


286 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


silent under such provocation, one might think them like the 
quacks in that their chief end was money and not their 
patients’ health. 

Here as often the Journal’s attitude seems anomalous. 
Its editors had waged bitter and really destructive warfare 
on Ward, in an attempt to ruin his nefarious business, yet 
merely because regular physicians refused to be drawn into 
a controversy, they published, with a statement that they did 
not believe them, Ward’s preposterous statistics. Such a 
policy leads one to the conclusion that after all it was a 
quarrel and not a principle that the Journal was interested 
in. Ward’s own attitude, too, is somewhat interesting. It 
would be hard to imagine a modern quack or vendor of a 
patent medicine attempting to advertise in a periodical which 
was trying to undermine his business, but in 1737 there 
seems to have been nothing absurd in such a situation.*® The 
Journal’s policy or point of view is indeed hard to fathom. 
Its campaign against Ward has every appearance of being 
serious and sincere, and yet as late as number 362, when it 
had been fighting Ward for over two years, it was capable 
of issuing what is virtually a disclaimer of any active inter- 
est in exposing him. In that issue, in answer to a letter 
urging it to include Taylor as well as Ward in its attack, it 
announced, consistently enough, that it distinguished between 
the two, but then went on to say that it had never undertaken 
to find out about the Pill and Drop but had simply published 
such cases as were brought in, well attested, and by known 
persons, and that no similar cases involving Taylor had been 
received. 

After the publication of Ward’s advertisement in number 
384, the Journal indeed displayed very little energy in his 
pursuit. This may have been due to a general lassitude and 
lack of interest on the part of the editors in a paper which in 
a few months they were to give up, or to their belief that 

“ Note earlier mention of the Journal’s regular practice of advertising 


patent medicines, even when it was frequently ridiculing them in its 
columns. 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 287 


they had given the campaign all the space it deserved. Dur- 
ing the last months of its existence, the only allusion to 
Ward consisted of a few casual contemptuous sneers at his 
puffing. The only item of any particular significance appears 
in number 406, quoted from a northern correspondent of 
the London Daily Post: 

The famous Dr. Ward with his Pill, etc., was at this place 
when I arrived here this day; he had a coach and six fine horses, 
three French horns almost continually sounding round the market- 
place (one of them I knew, as seeing him perform in the playhouse). 
Here is at least twenty gentlemen’s coaches from Durham and the 
neighborhood; and monstrous crowds of people of all sorts resort 
to him. But what I mostly observe is the ladies, who are extrava- 
gantly fond of him. It is generally reported he has cured by his pill 
several deaf people as well as rheumatick and the gout and all man- 
ner of distempers, insomuch that at this instant there are some 
hundreds about his lodgings.4¢ 
The Journal attempts to dull the colors of this rosy picture 
by remarking that it is “exactly in the style of a collector of 
news,” and declaring that it cannot be true since it turns “a 
famous London doctor into a mere circumforaneous country 
mountebank.” 

If this description from the pen of a traveller is to be 
taken at its face value, it is evident that Ward’s prosperity 
was again at flood tide. It is in fact quite probable that the 
check imposed upon it by the Journal's campaign was a 
merely temporary one. That there was a check, however, 
there can be no doubt. Ward would probably never have 
troubled to sue the Journal or to secure contradictory affi- 
davits if his practice had not been curtailed. Moreover, 
Ward’s “literary” legatee, John Page, confesses in the 
preface to his book on the quack that Clutton’s pamphlet, 
which was reprinted in part in the Journal, and must have 
benefited greatly by Clutton’s easy access to the Journal’s 
columns, for a time nearly destroyed the sale of the medi- 
cines. 


“ To contradict Ward’s puffs concerning cures in Yorkshire, inserted in 
the dailies, “merely for the sake of the ready,” the Journal (413) gives 
notice of the death of Edward Chaloner, a gentleman of £3000 a year, 
from Ward’s medicines, and promises a particular account of his death. 


288 . THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Page’s book also makes perfectly clear the extent of 
Ward’s impudent assurance. It may be remembered that his 
enemies had guessed at the composition of the Pill and Drop 
as being glass of antimony, arsenic, and cobalt, and that 
Ward had denied directly that they had come anywhere 
near the truth. Indeed, Page in his preface attacks Clutton 
for having pretended to discover the ingredients Ward used. 
Ward’s formulas, nevertheless, when revealed by Page, 
showed that Clutton and the quack’s other enemies had been 
right in believing glass of antimony to be one of his chief 
dependencies. Unfortunately the fact that this revelation 
was made only in 1763 deprived Clutton and the Journal’s 
other correspondents of any righteous satisfaction they 
might have taken in it. Page’s book carries an authoritative 
title: Receipts for preparing and compounding the principal 
medicines made use of by the late Mr. Ward. . . . By John 
Page, Esq., to whom Mr. Ward left his book of secrets. 
1763. Herein one finds that the pill was made from four 
ounces of glass of antimony, and one of dragon’s blood, 
made into a paste “with good sack or rich mountain wine” 
and formed into pills. The drop was merely one half ounce 
of glass of antimony to a quart of “the richest Malaga 
mountain” or sack. The dosage prescribed a pill of about 
one and one-half grains or half an ounce of the drop for 
adults, doses to be reduced for children or weak adults. That 
Ward had other, though less useful strings to his bow than 
the celebrated Pill and Drop, one may adduce from. the in- 
clusion of recipes for such remedies as “‘the white drop” (a 
preparation of aqua fortis, volatile salammoniac and quick- 
silver), ‘sweating powders” of ipecac, licorice, opium, nitre, 
and vitriolated tartar (dose: 20-40 grains), and also “fistula 
paste’’, “liquid sweat’, “dropsy purging powders’’, “essence 
for head-ache”, and “the red pill”. To judge from the cases 
presented in the Journal, however, Ward was relying, at 
least during the thirties, almost altogether on the undeniably 
powerful effects of the Pill and Drop. That the Journal, 
from whatever motive, lent itself to a campaign against him, 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 289 


and if only for a time succeeded in hampering and restrict- 
ing his reprehensible activities, are facts which even the most 
disapproving must record in its favor. 


Doubtless for the special student or scholar the Journal's 
chief interest lies in its connection with Alexander Pope. 
It is significant as an episode in the campaign against the 
Dunces, and as revealing Pope’s methods in guerilla and 
underground warfare. The nature and extent of Pope’s as- 
sociation with it it is impossible to explain definitely, but what 
we do know hardly tends to the poet’s credit. It seems clearly 
to have been another of those episodes in his life, which like 
the “P. T.” scandal, to take the most flagrant instance, re- 
flects the less heroic side of his character. Nevertheless, the 
material in which Pope had a hand, or which was written in 
his defense, is the core of the paper. The Journal is valuable 
too, of course, for the occasional flashes of illumination it 
casts on the careers of Pope’s contemporaries, more or less 
notable—on Fielding, Colley Cibber, Aaron Hill, Theobald, 
Bentley, Orator Henley, Joshua Ward, and many another. 

To some degree, perhaps, it is interesting as a monument 
to Richard Russel, for if it is to be a monument to anyone, 
it surely ought to be to him. It is hardly the kind of monu- 
ment a scholar, a commentator, and a conservative parson of 
the Church of England would probably have chosen, but it 
will assuredly serve the purpose better than his Vida or his 
“bales” of Barnabas’ epistles. They have long since returned 
to dust, and for them there can be little hope of resurrec- 
tion. The Journal on the contrary began with a generous 
endowment of life, and that endowment has by no means 
run out, even yet. For this persistence of life, this vivacity, 
one should of course return some thanks to Pope, but even 
more in all fairness to Russel. The “parson” had no mean 
part in the Journal along with Pope at the beginning, and 
he kept it going at a rattling gait long after Pope had dis- 
creetly and secretly disappeared. 

But from a broader point of view, the Journal has a 


290 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


greater interest than these. A general reader of historical 
or antiquarian turn, to whom the intricacies of Pope’s secret 
affairs, and the facts to be learned about Dunces or about 
editions of Shakespeare and Milton may mean little, may 
still be interested in the panorama of actual life, not only in 
Grubstreet but in innumerable other streets as well, that he 
may piece together from scraps sifted out of the Journal’s 
débris—for any newspaper two hundred years old must 
have in it considerable débris.. He may well believe that he 
is getting back to something like the origins or raw materials 
of Defoe or Fielding, for certainly it was out of such 
shreds and patches, and out of such character and spirit as 
one finds in the Journal that they moulded their novels. 

Yet that a modern reader, even one with a tolerant mind 
and a well developed historical perspective and faculty of 
detachment, should read the Journal with complete approval 
and sympathy is more than can be expected. In its own time 
one of its enemies called it “vile, dark, and dirty” and his 
judgment was echoed and re-echoed by many others in lan- 
guage equally plain. There was rarely a time when it was 
not concerned in warfare of one sort or another, but the 
only campaign of major importance in which it appears to 
have been on the side of the angels was the one whose 
history has just been narrated—the one against Ward. 

It is not that it constitutionally chose the wrong side. 
The various Dunces it attacked—Moore-Smythe, Ralph, 
Concanen, its rivals the Bee, the Prompter, the Hyp-Doctor, 
the numerous books and plays it undertook to annihilate— 
almost none of these deserved encouragement and support. 
Except for Fielding, Colley Cibber the comedian (apart 
from Colley Cibber the tragedian and laureate) and Lewis 
Theobald as an editor of Shakespeare, who was there in its 
list of victims for whom one should feel it his duty to wax 
indignant? But its method of attack, its manner of tearing 
limb from limb the inconsequential objects of its bitterness 
and malice (as also the more consequential ones )—these 
savor of the bull fight or the prize ring, indeed, and make 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 291 


an exciting show, but under the circumstances it is unde- 
niably hard to sympathize with them. In fact the tone of 
the Journal throughout is not only partisan and prejudiced ; 
it is hard and sardonic. 

As one looks back upon it across two centuries, he finds 
this illustrated most sharply in the caustic annotations with 
which Russel (and Martyn too, at the beginning) delighted 
to adorn the news items he culled from the dailies. As a 
record of life these items are most enlightening and enter- 
taining, and Russel’s italicized comments are often a delight. 
As long as his sarcasms are confined to the sensational and 
dishonest collectors of news with their absurd inaccuracies 
and exaggerations, one does not mind. But often his clever- 
ness, and he could be very clever, is expended on the victims 
of misfortune or of the most terrific human brutality. The 
most horrible and disgusting crimes of violence he was 
capable of treating with a cold blooded and ironical non- 
chalance that is little short of appalling. One must remem- 
ber too that Russel was not an ignorant and uncultivated 
man; he was a university graduate and a clergyman of the 
Church of England. If such facts did not then connote all 
that they are supposed to today, still it is distinctly surpris- 
ing that they did not guarantee more humanity and refine- 
ment of feeling than they did. 

All this, however, is judgment of the Journal and of 
Russel and his colleagues from a modern point of view, from 
outside their own age. Their contemporaries may have found 
them pretty strong, but certainly not so strong as we do. 
Surely the tone and the manners of the Journal were not an 
innovation. The age was used to Pope and Swift and to in- 
numerable transient satirists who dealt out personalities with 
as much gusto and abandon as did the Journal. In its quar- 
rels with the other papers, the Journal, which never lacked 
initiative, did, it is true, “first begin to brawl”, but its op- 
ponents were not slow to take up the cudgels in their own 
behalf and to return blow for blow to the very best of their 
ability. Even the Prompter, the organ of the comparatively 


292 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


mild and gentle Aaron Hill, let fly whole avalanches of bil- 
lingsgate quite equal to anything in the Journal. Hill, how- 
ever, like Pope, denied responsibility and protested that he 
knew nothing about what was going on. The newspapers 
of the time were not oracles of dignity and position anyway ; 
they had very little respectability to maintain. The Journal 
and the Prompter, as newspapers, could, and did freely, en- 
gage in squabbles of which people of standing like Pope and 
Hill preferred to keep clear. 

Indeed the Journal does not belie the age it lived in. It 
was a rough, brutal age. On the surface it was elegant; it 
made great pretenses at classic restraint and refinement, but 
underneath a very thin crust things were different. Here is 
merely another illustration of the divergence between litera- 
ture, at least of the more formal and impressive sort, and 
the actualities of life. What remains of a belief that an 
“Augustan’”’ or classic temper shaped and colored the lives 
of men of this period, when one reads the Dunciad, with all 
its notes and critical paraphernalia, or remembers the realism 
of Defoe or Fielding, or considers the implications of Rich- 
ardson’s novels, once they are stripped of their sentiment 
and smug piety? Surely all these illuminate the actual, every- 
day lives of the various social classes in the early eighteenth 
century and show us how people thought and acted in 
practical affairs. 

As has just been said, a paper like the Grub-street Journal 
is the raw material for such books. Any newspaper chroni- 
cles much small beer, but in the sum total of that small beer 
—in the news items, in the discussions of the thousand and 
one details that go to make up daily life, in the ideas on 
medicine and hygiene, on religion, on social manners, on 
literature and drama, and, what is perhaps more important, 
in the spirit in which such material is presented, one finds 
most certainly a chronicle and brief abstract of the time. 
It would be hard to maintain that the Palladian architecture 
of both the houses and the formal literature in this period 
tallied with the spirit and temper reflected in the Journal 


LAW, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE 293 


and the other newspapers or in the realistic fiction. Doubtless 
if one were to drop back two hundred years and pick up the 
thread of life in London, he would feel that Defoe, Fielding 
and Hogarth (not to mention the newspapers) had prepared 
him fairly well for the world he had dropped into—an age of 
Moll Flanders, Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, of Beer 
Alley and Gin Lane and Marriage a la Mode, and of the 
rough and ready world connoted in the news columns, the 
editorials and the correspondence of the Journal and its 
rivals. 

There is of course nothing to be surprised at in this, unless 
one has taken too seriously such adjectives as ‘classical’, 
‘Augustan’ or ‘Palladian’. The two currents of life, the 
actual and ideal (whether ‘romantic’ or ‘classical’) always 
run side by side, their streams sometimes mingling, some- 
times diverging sharply. There is always, no matter how 
civilized and enlightened the age, a plenty of crude brutality. 
Is there any reason to believe that the brutalities so brazenly 
recorded in the journalism and the fiction of this period 
could not be paralleled in our own police records or in the 
diaries of social workers? Most of us hear fairly often of 
occurrences which we ordinarily believe can not happen in 
so advanced an age as ours. But that is not the point. There 
may be in our age brutality as unredeemed as there was two 
hundred years ago, but it would never be treated in public 
print as it was treated in the Journal. Sensational crimes are 
still reported, but horrible details are glossed over, or pre- 
sented in comparative euphemisms, and where two centuries 
ago one found utter cynicism and lack of feeling one now 
finds at the worst an overblown sentimentality and bathos. 
Morover, fifty years saw a difference. Just as the novels 
of the later seventeen hundreds, after the rise of humani- 
tarianism and Wesleyanism, are infinitely politer and gentler 
than their predecessors, so are the newspapers. A reader of 
the journals of the 1780’s notices at once the dissimilarity 
in tone between them and their forebears of the 1730's. 
The manners of the Grub-street Journal whether in report- 


294 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ing news, or in discussion and controversy would never have 
been tolerated fifty years later.” In its own age it achieved 
an immediate popularity, a popularity which it lost only 
when it wore out and became dull. During its prime it was 
probably regarded by its disinterested readers as rather ex- 
treme, somewhat bad-mannered and ill-tempered, but after 
all as lively and refreshing. It was, one may surmise, only 
when their own toes or the toes of their friends got trodden 
on that it became “‘vile, dark, and dirty”. 

Indeed, the Journal was lively and vivid; it had gusto. Its 
dominant spirit in its good times was like Hogarth’s. Ho- 
garth is often crude and brutal, even terrible, but he is 
always fascinating. He reveals in astounding detail and with 
apparently inexhaustible vigor and spirit—satirically and 
dramatically heightened, of course—the world which the 
old Daniel Defoe and the young Henry Fielding beheld and 
reflected in their novels, and which flashes out continually 
from the pages of the Journal. The paper cannot boast that 
it reflects its age as do these great artists, but on a lower 
plane, and with an admixture of baser ores and irrelevancies 
such as must collect in a catch-all like a newspaper, it often 
reveals the robust and tonic qualities of the age which it 
shared with them. 

“In the matter of critical discussion, there were yet to come such 
famous bludgeonings as those of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly. Note 
also “Macpherson on Pinkerton: Literary Amenities of the [later] Eight- 
eenth Century” by W. A. Craigie, P. M. L. A., June, 1927, a good ex- 
ample of later criticism which recalls the early eighteenth century and 
suggests the tone of the Grub-street Journal. (The tone, however, seems 
to have been amply justified.) But certainly in general the rough and 


tumble, free-hitting manners of Grubstreet were much ameliorated in 
later generations. 





Th 





APPENDIX 


SHoRT SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS OF THE 
Journal AND THE Courier 


Here are listed all essays, letters, poems, epigrams, etc., 
which appeared in the first main section of the Grub-street 
Journal and in the Literary Courier of Grub-street, and in 
the column called “From the Pegasus in Grub-street,’”’ which 
ran from number 16 of the Journal to the end, number 418. 
The division between the first section and the Pegasus col- 
umn is indicated here by a . No material from the news 
items is included. They contain much that is important and 
interesting, but even the most perfunctory description of 
selected items seemed to increase the bulk of the appendix 
out of all proportion, and correspondingly to decrease its 
usefulness. As it is, it has seemed expedient to try to indi- 
cate only in the very briefest way the general import of the 
items that are listed. 

It is hoped that this appendix may be found useful as a 
key or means of ready reference to the main sections of the 
Journal, and may also furnish anyone who cares to glance 
through it a sort of bird’s-eye view of the paper, and an idea 
of chronology and proportion which the discussion of gen- 
eral topics in chapter form could hardly give. Incidentally it 
may reveal the comparative slightness of the Pope material. 
Matter which concerns Pope has been so described as to indi- 
cate that fact, and the only verse headings which have been 
listed (and verse headings were very frequent) are those 
from Pope’s own poems or from poems concerning him, for 
instance, Young’s Epistles. Yet in spite of such emphasis and 
favoritism the summary fails to make Pope stand out as the 
Journal's dominant interest, especially after its first year. 

Pseudonyms, initials, etc., have been noted, since in many 
cases, though not all of course, they are needed to show the 
give-and-take of controversy, or the reappearance from time 
to time of a given correspondent. In cases where correspond- 


[ 297 ] 





298 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


ents stated or implied that they were submitting the work of 
someone else, some such phrase as “submitted by” has been 
used to indicate the fact. It may be pointed out again that 
after the retirement of Martyn, Bavius and Maevius both 
meant Russel, and that he also frequently signed himself 
“J. T.2 “Poppy,” “Conundrum,” and “Dactyl,” and vocea- 
sionally “J. B.” and “B. B.” The “A,” “B,” andi sanane 
Memoirs have also been indicated, in parentheses. 

The Pegasus column usually included notes to contributors 
telling them that their papers had been received, could or 
could not be printed, and so forth. These notes have not been 
listed except in significant cases, especially such as give some 
clue to the Journal’s policy in dealing with its correspondents. 


THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 
1730 
January 8 
1. Heading from The Dunciad. A statement of general policy by 
Bavius (B) and “Jeffery Quidnunc” (B). 
2. Heading from The Dunciad. “The Ode for the New Year,” 
with comment by Bavius (M). 


3. The decision of the Journal to avoid politics, by Bavius (B). 
The division of poets into Parnassians and Grubeans. 


4. Heading from The Dunciad. The petition of “Kirleus” to be 
appointed bookseller to the Society (M). 


February 
5. Heading from The Dunciad. Essay on Miltonic verse (B). 
6. An attack on James Miller’s Humours of Oxford, by Bavius 
(M). A letter on an epitaph in 5, by Bavius. 


7. The attack on the Humours of Oxford continued. (M). A 
note that Thomson is a Parnassian and not a Grubean, by Bavius. 


8. An attack on medical writing, by “Ephraim Quibus, M.D.” 
(B). Notice of the death of the Morning Post (M). 
March 
9. An attack on critical emendation of Milton, by “Zoilus” (B). 


10. Attack on the legal advantages of the rich, by Bavius (M). 
“Verses occasioned by a late famous sermon, on Jan. 30,” by 
“Poppy.” (Memoirs :—‘Maevius” [M]). 

11. Satirical review of Bradley’s Materia Medica (B). 


APPENDIX 299 


12. Heading from Pope’s Essay on Criticism. On critical attitudes 
toward new plays, with special reference to pamphlets concerning 
Thomson’s Sophonisba (M). A letter on emendations of Milton, by 
Bentley, with comment by Bavius. 


April 


13. Heading from The Dunciad. Attack on a deistic pamphlet by 
Woolston (M). Verses, enclosed in a letter from “Philomusus,” 
with a sarcastic note by Bavius. 


14. Satire on the jury system, occasioned by the Abergavenny 
scandal (B). Two illiterate letters. 

15. Account of the election of Gilliver as bookseller to the Society, 
and the defeat of Curll (M). Lines—“The Character of the Late 
Lady A—y” [Abergavenny]. 

16. An attack on Ralph’s Fashionable Lady, by Bavius (B), with 
a letter on the same subject by “J. T.” (M). A letter on the use of 
“Fisq.” in lists of attorneys, and two epitaphs, from the same hand. 
The first appearance of the column “From the Pegasus in 
Grub-street.” A news item concerning Eustace Budgell. 

17. Heading from The Dunciad. An attack on various Grubean 
writers as producers of waste paper, by “N. M.” A Welsh surgeon’s 
bill. Note of the purchase by the King of a house, to be used 
as a Library, and an attempted robbery of it. 








May 


18. A burlesque essay toward a new theory of physic (B). Com- 
ment on a story of a plant which had made a dumb woman speak 
_(B). Epitaph, and emendations of one published earlier. Com- 
plaint that Grubeans contribute to the other papers (M). Account 
of a case in Chancery; the will of the late Admiral Hosier. 

19. Heading from The Dunciad. An attack on The Epistle of 
Calista to Altamont (in the Abergavenny scandal). The first attack 
on James Moore-Smythe (A). Notice of a charity performance 
of The Orphan. 

20. Heading from Young’s first Epistle to Mr. Pope. A reply to 
the attack on Pope in the One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope (A). Com- 
ment on political discussion in other newspapers, and on “‘Proposals 
for General Toleration” in the Craftsman, by Bavius (M). 
Notice of the death of The Post-man Remounted. 

21. Heading from Young’s first Epistle to Mr. Pope. Notice of 
policy in dealing with contributions (B). A criticism of the Journal, 
in friendly tone, with sarcastic allusions to Ralph, and to other sub- 
jects in the Journal, with comment, especially on Ralph (by M). 











300 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


An attack on the author of the Sessions Paper (legal), by “N. H.,” 
with comment. Lines on scandalous scribblers, by Bavius (M). 
Further reply to the One Epistle (M). Two epigrams on Moore- 
Smythe (A). 





June 


22. Heading from The Dunciad. An attack on politico-religious 
writing (M). Verses on Tindal. A defence of the Bishop of 
Rochester against attack in the One Epistle. “Verses by Mr. C—l.” 


23. A letter satirizing physicians, with comment. A ballad, “The 
true En—sh D—n to be hanged for a R—pe.” Political news 
from Northampton. Satire, with a parody, on Fielding’s Tom 
Thumb, by Bavius (M). Notice of the whipping of Moore-Smythe 
(A). 

24. Heading from The Dunciad. An attack on Woolston by 
“Philo-Libert.” Lines from an “Essay on The Dunciad” (praise of 
Pope). Satire on Curll. Latin verses paraphrased into an epi- 
gram on Mun, a piratical bookseller. Epigram on Moore-Smythe 
(A). Verses on a late sermon. Satirical notice concerning Moore- 
Smythe’s whipping (A). 

25. Heading from Young’s first Epistle to Mr. Pope. Letter from 
“Philarchaeus” on Bentley’s emendation of Milton, with comment. 
Lines “To Mrs. M. H.,” and a ballad, ‘““A king-at-arms disarmed at 
law.” A letter on political affairs at Northampton, by “T. H.” 
Comment on verses defending Moore-Smythe. An epitaph intended 
for Newton. Note concerning a suit of Moore-Smythe against Gil- 
liver, with an epigram (A), and an advertisement of Moore-Smythe 
as strayed (A). 














July 


26. A burlesque letter to Moore-Smythe from his “uncle,” Worm- 
powder Moore. Comment on an emendation in Urry’s Chaucer, with 
a P.S. ridiculing Bradley, the botanist at Cambridge (B). —— 
News item of a robbery. Notice concerning a correspondent. An 
epigram on Moore-Smythe, with annotation. Another epigram on 
Moore-Smythe (A), and Pope’s epitaph on Robert Digby (A). 

27. An attack on Woolston, by “N. T.” An imitation of Theo- 
critus. Verses on Dunces (M). Notice of the Weekly Medley 
as strayed (M). 

28. A report on the Cambridge commencement by Maevius. 
Pope’s epitaph on Newton. An epigram of Martial, imitated by 
“Dactyl” (M). Epigram on a print inscribed to Walpole. 
Satirical remarks on various newspapers, and a scandalous book- 
seller. 








APPENDIX 301 


29. The character of the historian Thuanus, by “B. T.” A reply 
of Moore-Smythe to his “uncle,’ with an epigram on him, and a 
threat to print the story of his suit against Gilliver. A letter 
from the Weekly Medley, with a reply by Bavius (M). 

30. A satirical attack on Ralph, as writer of the Weekly Medley. 
Lines on John Short, porter at the Post-office. Account of the absurd 
action of a jury in Essex. A squib on the Anodyne Necklace. 
A cryptic epigram, with allusion to Col. Chartres. 








August 





31. On political news writers. An attack on Dr. Turner’s 
translation of Ulrich Hutten: De Morbo Gallico. 


32. “A Dissertation on Anagrams, Chronograms, and Acrostics, 
by Mr. Poppy.” An epigram on Battie’s edition of Isocrates. Letter 
by “Will Slyboots” to Concanen, on his “Speculatist” (A). 
Notice of the publication of a seditious Statesman’s Miscellany. 


33. Proposals for erecting a college for the habitation of Grub- 
Street authors, by “Giles Blunderbuss, Esq.” (B). A political letter 
on the King of Spain, by “Sortilegus.” A letter on political prophecy, 
with satire on Woolston. A letter from “Philo-Grubaeus,” including 
an epigram in imitation of Dryden’s on Milton. Notice of a 
new work by a Grubean on the barometer. A Latin epigram imitated 
in English by a young gentleman of Eton, contributed by “L. M.” 

34. An account of Whiston’s life of Dr. Samuel Clarke, by 
Bavius. A correction of the Journal’s version of Dryden’s epigram 
on Milton, by “D. M.,” with a note by Bavius on an allusion to Cib- 
ber. Letter and verses by “Philomusus” on the author of verses on 
the death of Mr. John Philipps, and a reprint of that poem. 
Notice of entertainments at various “theatrical booths.” 











September 


35. Heading from The Dunciad. A letter on Concanen’s Specu- 
latist (A). A burlesque emendation of Hudibras; satire on Bentley, 
by “Zoilus.” Notice of an obscure inscription found near Norwich. 
Reprint of six lines, refused by the Journal, but printed by the 
Universal Spectator, and explanation that they are plagiarized from 
verses by Pope. 


36. A letter by “A. B.” on Whiston’s life of Clarke. A letter by 
“Philophilus” continuing the discussion of Dryden’s epitaph on Mil- 
ton. A satirical squib on “Francis Walsingham” (the Free 
Briton). 

37. A letter by “B. T.” attacking prose translation of classics, with 
introductory note by Bavius. A letter by “Philomusus,” on Whiston’s 








302 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


life of Clarke. Verses—“A Session of the Cambridge Critics” 
(Memoirs :—by Mr. William Pattison of Sidney College). A 
letter on translations of Burnet’s De Statu Mortuorum, with a note 
by Bavius. A note by “Jeffery Quid-nunc” on Henley’s assurance 
(M). 

38. A burlesque letter from Concanen, with an editorial note (A). 
An attack by “Faith-and-Troth” on Whiston’s logic. Verses by the 
author of an ode to the Duke of Buckingham. Verses by ‘Philo- 
Grubaeus,” satire on political writing. Verses, probably “from the 
same hand,” to the artist Bonewitz. A statement of policy, with 
a denial of malicious intent, etc., by Bavius (M). 








October 


39. A letter on Hudibras, by “M. J.” A letter by “G. P.,” telling 
of the insolence of the deputy-warden of the Fleet. An attack by 
“Caledonius” on a Cambridge oration on the beheading of Charles 
I An account by Bavius of a quarrel between the London 
Journal and the Craftsman (M). Begins a column of titles of new 
books and pamphlets. 

40. A letter by “Richard Love-Merit” on verses by “James 
Drake,” with allusions to Stephen Duck. Satirical verses on Duck. 
A second poem on Duck, with a note by Bavius. Account of a 
plot against a merchant of Bristol. An attack on Theobald’s method 
of securing subscribers for his works (A). 

41. A letter on Hudibras, by “M. J.” An attack on a new work on 
anatomy, with comment by Bavius (B). A brief allusion to 
Stephen Duck, and also to Moore-Smythe, deceased, and his ghost 
(M). 

42. A letter by “J. M.” on prose translations of the classics, with 
a note by Bavius (M). A reply by “Britanno-Scotus” to “Cale- 
donius” in 39, with comment by Bavius. Verses on the char- 
acter of a rural justice. A reprint of verses attacking the Journal, 
and a note signed L. Gilliver. 














43. A print of the arms of the city companies, with an account of 
“the ancient manner” of celebrating the Lord Mayor’s day, from 
Stow’s Survey of London. Verses to Parsons, Mayor of Lon- 
don, by Maevius (M). An account of a case in the Lord Mayor’s 
Court. 





November 


44. A letter enclosing verses on the Mayor by a “Coffee Boy,” 
with allusions to Theobald and Pope, by “Timothy Tenfoot.” “A 
Ballad, by a Lady.” A passage from the London Journal, elevated 
into poetry. An epitaph on Mrs. Ann Jennings. Verses to the 


APPENDIX 303 


memory of Mrs. Anne Oldfield. An epigram “sent from Newbold- 
super-Avon.” A letter by “S—” on the villainy of booksellers (A). 
Notice of a burlesque commission to choose a laureate. A de- 
scription of the Lord Mayor’s procession. 


45. A letter on Hudibras, by “M. J.” A song, “sent us by an un- 
known hand.” Reprint of lines by “our ingenious brother, Mr. 
Ward,” with a sarcastic introduction. Epigram, “On the Candi- 
dates for the Laurel” (A). 


46. A long discussion of the proper ceremonials for the installa- 
tion of a laureate (A). An epigram by Bavius on Cibber and Duck 
as candidates. Complimentary allusion to Robert Dyer, on his 
admission as attorney of the King’s Bench. A sarcastic attack on a 
course on the Solar System given by George Gordon. A reply to an 
attack on the Queen in the London Journal. Verses, with comment 
by Bavius, in reply to an attack in Fog’s Journal (cf. allusion to 
Ward in 45) (M). [The Memoirs print an epigram on Walpole, as- 
cribing it to (B), which does not appear in the Journal, 46.] 

47. A letter by “Philo-Duncius” on political writers. A letter to 
“Peter—” by “Ruth C—,”’ a Quaker. Verses to the Free Briton, by 
Bavius (M). A statement of policy, an answer to criticism, 
etc. An epigram on Duck. An epigram on Cibber, by Bavius. 














December 


48. On the character necessary in a good magistrate, by Bishop 
Atterbury (reprinted), with picture of Parsons, Lord Mayor, and 
verses in French, English and Latin, all by (M). News item:— 
Cibber’s election as laureate. Notice of a meeting of the Society 
to celebrate Cibber’s election. 


49. Heading from Pope’s Essay on Criticism. Editorial statement 
of policy toward contributors (M). Letter on the earlier quarrel be- 
tween “Caledonius” and “Britanno-Scotus,’ with comment. Letter 
from “Philarchaeus” on transcription of favorite passages in read- 
ing, with an allusion to Bentley, and an English version by “Dactyl” 
of an epigram of Martial (M). Letter from “Simple Simon” attack- 
ing Duck’s poetry. An epigram on Cibber. Verses: “Apollo’s Re- 
venge on Daphne.” Verses by “Crambo Rimeus” attacking 
Gilliver. Verses which Fog’s might use in answer to the Journal. 
Notice of Duck’s election to the Society. 

50. Heading from Pope’s Essay on Criticism. A letter on the 
Cambridge commencement. A defence of Duck, by “L. M.” Trans- 
lation of a Latin passage, requested by certain readers. An epigram 
on Mrs. Oldfield, by ‘‘Philo-Grub.” A new epitaph in West- 
minster Abbey, on Henry Withers. Sarcastic comment on verses 
against Pope in the St. James Evening Post. Notice that Duck had 











304 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


modestly declined the honor of election to the society. Notice of the 
Society’s congratulations of Cibber. Two epigrams on Cibber. 

51. An article on almanacs (B). Paraphrase of an epigram 
in 50. Three epigrams on Cibber and the laureateship (the second 
by A; the third by M). Answer to lines in St. James Evening Post 
attacking Pope. 

52. An attack by “B. T.” on the barbarous Latin of a medical 
writer. An answer by “Simple Simon” to “ L. M.” in the discussion 
of Duck, with various advertisements relative to Duck’s poems. A 
letter by “Courtley Nice,’ attacking the style of contemporary 
journalists, with editorial comment. Latin verses. Epigram by 
Bavius, “Conjugal Sincerity.” Verse fable in answer to the 
Journal’s enemies (M). Verses on the laureateship. 








1731 
January 


53. On empirical experiments on criminals (B). On the original 
of the character Hudibras. Letter from “Q. S.” on almanac adver- 
tisements with a reprint of one, and comment by Bavius. A 
reprint of a discussion by Newton concerning the relative value of 
gold and silver. On the botanical meaning of laurel and bays. Two 
epigrams on the laureateship (the first by M). Notice to corre- 
spondents. 


54. Heading from The Dunciad. Cibber’s New Year’s Ode, with 
annotations (M). Letter from “Thomas Didymus” enclosing a dis- 
cussion of epic manners in the Aeneid. Account of a mistake in 
Fog’s of Beaurimez for Bouts-rimez (M). 


55. On primitive poets, Duck, etc. (B). Letter by “O. R.” on an 
error in an almanac. Further annotation of Cibber’s Ode. 
Notice of impending election of an assistant surgeon at St. Bartholo- 
mew’s. Epitaph on William Rollo. A contemptuous attack on “a 
learned member” (revealed in the Memoirs as ‘Mr. D. Bellamy”) 
(M). Comment on a new Hymn to the Laureat. Epigram on a medi- 
cal quarrel. Epitaph on Mrs. Oldfield. Notice of the failure of Theo- 
philus Cibber’s play, The Lover. 

56. On political disputes, by “Neuter.” Verses: Pandora, by 
Bavius. Cryptic notice of a duel in Hyde Park. Verses on the 
apotheosis of “that ever blessed martyr, King Charles.” 











” 





February 


57. On almanac predictions, by Bavius. Letter by “Philomeides 
I,” on church music. Reply to a letter in Fog’s, abusive of 
Pope and the Journal. 





APPENDIX 305 


58. A long article by Bavius, abridging a Farewell to French 
Kicks, a pamphlet printed in 1715. 

59. An account of various obscene Hottentot ceremonials, with 
implication that they might be applied to the Dunces, by Bavius 
(B). Verses written from Fleet Prison, with a note on the author, 
W—nms. Comment on a new poem, Harlequin Horace. 


60. Extended comment by Bavius on Harlequin Horace. 
Bentley’s epitaph on Newton. An analysis of a new life of Mrs. Old- 
field, published by Curll. Various notices, including a repudiation of 
The Grub-street Miscellany, and a promise to publish an authentic 
selection. 








March 


61. Another analysis of almanac prediction. Notice of the 
recovery from illness of Henry Ashton, a South-Sea director. A 
letter from “Belinda” on the Hottentot ceremonials, with comment 
(M). Verses, “On a beautiful lady who was blind.” 

62. On impudence, with special reflection on Henley. Verses, The 
City Ladies and Country Lass, “by Mr. Lockman.” Satire on 
an open letter to a member of Parliament by “Mr. T. D., Attorney.” 
Verses: “Upon Wit.” 

63. On Hudibras, by “M. J.” Reprint of two handbills on the 
Charitable Corporation. —— Notice of a false news item taken 
from the London Evening Post. Satire on Henley and the Hyp- 
Doctor (M). 

64. Further analysis of the Life of Mrs. Oldfield, with special 
reference to passages on Pope’s letters to Cromwell. A bur- 
lesque of Henley’s advertisements. 











April 


65. Further attack on the almanacs. Letter signed Bavius, with 
verses by James Moore Smythe. Verses: “The Waterman’s 
Reply to the Doctor’s Answer, printed in the Craftsman of Satur- 
day last.” On jokes in various political writings (M). Doggerel 
satirizing Henley’s advertisements. 





66. Further remarks on Harlequin Horace. Lines “To Mrs. M. 
H.” Epigram on Moore Smythe’s verses in 65 (A). Notice of 
false news items in London Evening Post and other papers. Notice 
to correspondents. Talk of a nurse to a child, with satire on Henley. 
Other comments on Henley’s activities (M). 

67. Description of Edinburgh in Scotch dialect, contributed by 
“G. G.” Description of a satirical theatrical print, by “Rogiers 
Drury.” Notice of the coming production of a farce by the 








306 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


actor Hippisley. Verses on Henley, an answer to one of his adver- 
tisements attacking Martyn (B), and an epigram on Henley (M). 


68. Reprint of the preface to the Farewell to French Kicks, an 
attack on the deists, Collins and Tindall, with comment (M). Letter 
by Obadiah Anthem, a parish clerk, attacking the assessment of tithes 
by vestrymen. A cryptic allusion to a scandal in society. Satire 
on Henley’s advertisements. Lines: “A dialogue between a vestry- 
man and a doctor of divinity.” 

69. An abridgement of “A. Welstede’s” life of Henley, with notes. 
Reprint of lines on Henley from The Dunciad, with Pope’s note. 
Predictions for May, by Bickerstaff. Letter from a bankrupt. Lines 
from “J. W.” on the Warden of the Fleet. Notice of the death 
of Defoe, with an epigram. 








May 


70. A letter on Welsh antiquities. Letter to Mr. Ephraim Cham- 
bers, by “L. S.” calling attention to an error in an article on 
Light. Lines to “F. Osborne, Esq.” Letter by “Salisbury 
Steeple” on a new play, The Contrast. An attack on the London 
Evening Post and the Weekly Register for plagiarism. This con- 
tains two paraphrases of an epigram (M). Satire on Henley. 

71. An attack on Henley, with special reference to his grammars. 
An epigram on Henley (M). On the verses on “Osborne” in 
70. A letter enclosing two Latin paraphrases of an epigram by 
Allan Ramsay quoted in 70, with alterations by Maevius (M). Lines 
on “the contrast between the late Duke of Buckingham and the 
author of the Contrast.” 

72. A reprint of “The Newtonian Creed,” with a request that Dr. 
Pemberton, a late writer on Newton, explain its meaning. Observa- 
tions on an obscure act concerning the Post Office. Another letter 
signed “Bankrupt’—satire on the irresponsibility of bankrupts. 
More lines from “J. W.” in Fleet Prison. A letter from “Anti- 
Quack” on Henley, and lines on Henley (M). 

73. A complaint from a Templar that in spite of all efforts he 
does not get on in society; with a contemptuous allusion to Moore- 
Smythe. A letter on Welsh antiquities, by “Anglo-Saxonicus.” An 
attack on Henley, by “M. Marrow-bone.” An attack by “Tom 
Thunderer” on the author of a political pamphlet, “Narzanes, or the 
Injured Statesman,” with an answer by “Philo-Narzanes” to adver- 
tisements by “Tom Thunderer.” Verses to the Deputy Warden of 
the Fleet by “J. W.” Letter asking Bavius to attack “your 
laborious brother, The Last Dying Speech,’ etc. An attack by 
“Philo Grubstreet”’ on The Contrast. An epigram on a new picture 
of Cibber (M). 














APPENDIX 307 


June 


74. Long attack by Bavius on other journals, especially the 
Craftsman (M). A bill of expenses of the Mayor of Norwich in 
1561. An attack on the two Cibbers, enclosing lines in Latin 
and English on them (M). 


75. An attack on Tindall, with special reference to his Christianity 
as old as the Creation. Notice of death of Jezreel Jones, naturalist, 
signed “B. Butterfly,” etc., with a letter of his to a sailor in 1711. 
A short leter in Welsh dialect, enclosing verses describing a 
tavern brawl. Notice of production of The Grubstreet Opera, with 
directions to the Society to attend, by Bavius. 


75. Political discussion of the London Journal and the Crafts- 
man. Jezreel Jones’s letter in 75 versified. Account of an inci- 
dent at a funeral. Two epigrams; one on “Danvers, Fog, and Grub,” 
from the Courant; the other on the Courant, London Journal, and 
Free Briton (M). 

77. A defence by “S” of the Journal’s method. An analysis of 
passages from Welstede’s Life of Henley, signed “J. T.” A 
letter from “J. W.” on the abuses practiced by the Deputy Warden 
of the Fleet. 














July 


78. Heading from Pope’s Essay on Criticism. A letter by “N. M.” 
attacking other newspapers. A letter by William Piers and one dy 
Eustace Budgell, in a quarrel between the two. Satiric allusion 
to the Craftsman (M). A letter by “Philo-Grubaeus” on Henley and 
a rival “Blind Orator.” A bill of fare for the wax chandlers’ com- 
pany in 1478. An epigram on Dennis (A). 


79. A reprint in parallel columns of a political discussion in The 
Craftsman, a pamphlet, and the Free Briton. A news item on 
the prisoners in the Fleet. A reprint of an absurd advertisement of 
Henley’s in the Daily Journal, turned into verse (M). 








80. A continuation of the political material in 79. A bur- 
lesque letter from ‘“‘Philo-Grubaea,” revealed as Mrs. Mary Davis, 
applying for membership in the Society. Lines: ‘““To Mr. Pope, on 
his being personally abused” (M). 





81. Political material continued. A second »urlesque letter 
from Mrs. Davis, very illiterate. Another letter from “J. W.” on the 
Fleet Prison. A letter from “W. G.,” a Quaker, urging the Journal 
to be kind to Henley. An epigram on Henley. 

82. A letter by “S,” satire on Bentleian emendation of Milton. An 
answer to Piers by Budgell. A letter from “J. W.” on the 
Fleet. An epigram on Bowman, Vicar of Dewsbury (M). 








308 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


August 


83. Another letter of Budgell to Piers. An illiterate letter enclos- 
ing silly verses. A letter from “P. Dulman,” containing an emenda- 
tion of Milton. Another letter from “J. W.” on the Fleet, with 
a letter of thanks from the prisoners to the Journal, for taking their 
side. An epigram on newspaper writers (M). 

84. Heading from The Dunciad. An attack on the Daily Courant, 
by “Elkanah Conundrum” (M). Satirical verses on nonconformists. 
News concerning the prisoners in the Fleet. A letter from 
“Peter Squib” on customers who read for nothing in book shops. A 
letter from “the Blind Orator, P. G.,’—satire on Henley. An epi- 
gram on Henley. 

85. An attack on Bowman’s sermon, “The traditions of the clergy 
destructive of religion.” A verse fable (M). A petition of the 
Fleet prisoners, in verse. A paraphrase by Maevius of an epigram 
translated in the Universal Spectator. 

86. Heading from The Dunciad. Letter to the Free Briton attack- 
ing ministerial hacks, signed “Elkanah Conundrum.” Further attack 
on Bowman’s sermon. Verses attacking ‘‘Cheyne’s silly books.” 
A doggerel description of entertainments at the theatrical booths 
(M). A sarcastic allusion to Henley’s advertisements. 














September 


87. A continuation of the attack on Bowman. A letter from 
“Philarchaeus” with an emendation of Milton. An allusion to an 
attack on the Universal Spectator. A humorous anecdote versified. 


88. Account of Byng’s victory over the Spanish fleet in 1718. An 
epigram on Henley. Allusion to Henley. 

89. A letter by “Thomas Didymus” on lack of consistency in 
epic manners in the Odyssey,—referred to by Bavius as “an ingen- 
ious banter.” An emendation of Milton by “Philonous.” A verse 
letter from “Worm-Powder” Moore to Henley. Notice of the 
death of a prebendary of Winchester. An epigram on Bowman (M). 

90. An account of a Grub-street colony in Elysium, by “Fare- 
well.” A letter from “Thomas Tillage’—satire on country squires. 
Verses: “A true Tale of a Country Squire.” On Henley’s ad- 
vertisements. An anecdote about quarrels between chimney-sweeps 
and millers, and sailors and colliers, with epigrams applying it 
politically to the newspapers (the second by M). 

91. Heading from The Rape of the Lock. A humorous letter by 
“Philo-Grub,” on the “Hyp.” A letter of suggestions to almanac- 
writers, by “Philo-Philomath.” Verses: “Astropian Gallantry, or 
the Peach-stone,” and an epigram on the same subject. An analysis 














APPENDIX 309 





of chances in the lottery. A versified anecdote. Two speeches 
made by the new Lord Mayor. A dialogue between Maevius and 
Bowman (M). 
October 
92. A satirical attack on Bowman, signed “Aminadab” (in the 
character of a non-conformist). A letter to Bowman by “Scep- 
ticus.” Verses on the Astrop Peach-stone. 


93. Article by “Seeker,” with long quotations, on arrest and im- 
prisonment, apropos of the Fleet prisoners. An answer by “Quibus” 
to an attack on the Journal in the Courant; also a reference to Hen- 
ley, with comment by Bavius. Discussion of a Latin passage by 
“Moromastix,” with a reply by “Ushero-Mastix,” and comment by 
members of the Society. Verses on Bowman (M). 

94. Review of The Constitutions of the Free Masons, just pub- 
lished, by “Spondee.” Letter to Bowman by “Laicus.” Several 
questions and answers in a controversy with “two or three renegado 
authors.” “A candidate’s letter to the freeholders of a certain 
county, versified.” 

95. A broadside of the arms of the city companies and the Lord 
Mayor’s show, with a prose description. Latin verses on the 
Lord Mayor translated, also verses to the Lord Mayor Elect, by 
Maevius (M). 














November 


96. Heading from The Dunciad. An allegorical interpretation of 
the pictures in 95 by T. W—n [Woolston] (M). Verses: “To the R. 
Hon. The Lord Mayor,” by Maevius (M). On the affairs of 
the Fleet prisoners. “A conference between Aaminadab, a Quaker, 
and William Bowman, Vicar of Dewsbury,” with an interpretation 
by Woolston. 

97. The birth-day ode, with notes (M)..A letter by “J. B.” to the 
Free Briton defending the Mayor and government of London, for 
action relative to the erection of a statue of King William (M). 
Draught of a bill to prohibit the sale of books by persons “convicted 
of death,” with exceptions in favor of Theobald, Cibber, and Henley. 
Verses on the controversy over the statue of King William (M). 

98. A letter by “A. B.” in the controversy over the statue of King 
William. Verses: “The Modern Poets.” An emendation of 
“Chevy Chace,’ by “Zoilus.” Doggerel verses (Memoirs :—“oc- 
casioned by the folly of persons in hiring horses in the lottery at a 
most extravagant rate,” by M). 

99. Long argument in the controversy over King William’s 
statue. A letter on a non-conformist clergyman who conformed 
with hopes of preferment. Lines: ‘“‘A receipt to make an epigram.” 
Epigram: Homerus Bentleti ab igne servatus. 














310 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


December 


100. Continuation of the statue controversy, by Maevius. —— 
Letter by “Catholicus” in answer to the letter on conformity in 99. 
(Abuse of the Journal.) Two epigrams on Bentley’s Milton. 


101. Letter by “A. H.” on the dullness of story-tellers, Letter by 
“Philo-Bilstone,” defending ironically Bilstone of Oxford in a con- 
troversy with Thomas Hearne. Notes on contributions received. 
Humorous news item. Letter from “Wonder,” enclosing an epigram 
“On Bentley’s Homer . . . preserved from fire.” Epigram on Wel- 
sted and Cooke. A list of Henley advertisements. 


102. Fragment of a satire from Swift and Pope’s Miscellanies, 
with a Latin version by a gentleman of Wadham College. Various 
accounts in the newspapers of an East India ship attacked by pirates. 
An attack on Bowman by “Philo-Vermigeneris.” Announce- 
ment of a pamphlet against Bowman: “Bomanou Kluthi, or, Hark 
to Bowman.” 








103. Letter by a physician discussing medical feuds, with hostile 
notes by the editors. An account by “‘Colunius” of the reception of 
Buckingham at the French Court in 1670. Epigram by Bavius, on 
a physician being called out of church. A letter from a clergy- 
man at Bury, satirical on the plays given by boys at school, with an 
epilogue to Jgnoramus. One of Henley’s advertisements, with lines 
by (M). 

104. Review of the late quarrel over dissenters. A letter from 
“Billy Vapour,” facetiously praising and criticising the Journal, and 
describing his own character, with sarcastic notes by the editors. 
Verses: “To Mr. Pope”’—fiattery. A letter from “John a 
Nokes” complaining that lines he had submitted, burlesquing Cib- 
ber’s odes, had neither been printed nor returned. The lines printed 
herewith. 








1732 
January 


105. Cibber’s New Year’s Ode, with comment and annotation— 
a mock defense of Cibber (M). A “nonsensical” poem in imitation 
of Cibber, with a note by Bavius asking that no more be submitted. 
A letter from ‘Teague’ on the “Anodyne Necklace.” Book- 
sellers’ notices, with satirical comment, especially in reference to 
Curll and Henley. 

106. A letter describing a vision of a visit by Cibber to the 
Elysian Fields, by “A. B.” A letter enclosing a comment on Horace, 
with allusion to Bentley on Milton, and comments by the editors. 
Lines by Bavius, “To the King.” A parody of the last ode. 
Notice of false Latin in Welsted’s Dullness and Scandal (A). 








APPENDIX ou 


107. Three letters by “The Seeker,” ““H. P—r,” and “W. H.” on 
“Arithmetic, Metaphysics, and Physics,” all, according to an edi- 
torial introduction, published because of the importunity of their 
authors. A facetious tale, in verse, by Bavius. Reprint of a 
circular letter to members of Parliament, requesting a reform in 
processes of law. Notices of false report of the death of a dissent- 
ing minister. Letter on punning by “Henry Conundrum,” with a 
punning epitaph on one Theophilus Cave. 

108. Heading from The Dunciad. A discussion by “J. T.” of the 
introduction to Bentley’s Milton. A list of the regicides of 1648. An 
attack by “E. P.” on The Modish Couple. Lines: “A Recipe to make 
a modern dramatic Poet. To C— B—, Esq.” [Charles Bodens]. 
Comment on a letter in the Courant. A patriotic ode to George and 
Caroline, by “Britannicus.” 








February 

109. A list of the witnesses against Charles I, with doggerel 
sneering at their social status. A letter from “Philo-Vermigeneris” 
comparing Cibber with Carpenter, poet laureate of the city of Here- 
ford. Lines by Maevius on the banqueting-house at Whitehall (M). 
A letter from “W. F.,” desiring to submit mss. on the last new 
comedy, and on other dramatic subjects. Humorous advertisement 
of a shop for razor strops (M). 

110. Letter from “Horatianus” attacking Bentley’s Milton, with 
editorial comment. “Some account of the state of prisons since the 
late act.’ Prologue and epilogue to The Orphan, at a public school 
performance. A letter by “Tim Cockade” sneering at Bodens, 
author of The Modish Couple. The testimony of Penkethman, the 
actor, at a murder trial, as it is said to have been given in blank 
verse, with introductory note by (M). 

111. Three sermons in parallel columns on King Charles the 
Martyr. An epilogue to [gnoramus, spoken at a performance at 
Bury School. 

112. An attack on The Modish Couple, and managerial methods, 
by “Dramaticus.” A letter by “Conscientious Doubtful” on observ- 
ance of King Charles’ day. Epitaph on a charitable gentleman. 
A letter by “R. D.” telling of seeing a barrister throwing dice with 
an orange girl for oranges. An attack by “T. D.” on Henley’s adver- 
tisements (M). An epigram on sermons on King Charles (M). 


March 
113. Further attack by “J. T.” on Bentley’s preface to his Milton. 
An attack by “A. Z.” on Bentley’s method, with editorial notes. 
Notice of receipt of correspondence on Bentley’s Milton. A repudi- 
ation of a new collection called Grubiana (M). 

















/ 


312 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


114. A serious moral essay on the “true notion of virtue.” A dia- 
logue between two hack writers, indirect praise of the Journal, and 
satire on the booksellers, their hacks, and on Henley (M). A 
detailed analysis of Grubiana with a list of errors, and an epigram 
by Maevius on its publishers (M). 

115. A letter on the itch of scribbling, by ‘“Prosaicus”; attacks 
several persons, especially Cibber. A burlesque letter from C— J— 
[Charles Johnson] to “Dramaticus,” with comment (M). The list 
of witnesses against King Charles, with bitter comment. A letter 
from “Philoludicri” retailing another comic anecdote concerning the 
barrister mentioned in 112. A laudatory notice concerning 
Samuel Sharp, a surgeon. Verses, with satirical comment, on the 
Universal Spectator. Notes to contributors. Notice of approaching 
publication of The Select Memoirs of the Society of Grub-street, 
with further attack on Grubiana. An epigram in reply to one in The 
Weekly Register by Maevius. Notice of a meeting of South Sea 
stockholders, with allusion to Cibber (M). A letter from “Aly” to 
Woolston, calling a new pamphlet to his attention, with editorial 
note. 

116. Letter by “A. Z.” attacking Bentley’s critical method. A note 
by “A. Z.” enclosing a sailor’s letter (a narrative) written in 1656. 
An epigram on Bentley. A notice to correspondents. Lines oc- 
casioned by a discussion of church and state, and King Charles, in 
the London Journal (M). 

117. Attack on The Modern Husband, by ‘“‘Dramaticus,” An 
anecdote of the funeral of Col. Chartres. An epigram by Maevius 
on Henley (M). 














April 

118. Further attack by Bavius on Bentley (M). Burlesque emen- 
dation by “Zoilus’” of a passage from Paradise Lost. Laudatory 
lines to Walker, the actor, on his approaching benefit, by “M. 
Dramaticus.” 

119. Heading from Swift’s and Pope’s Miscellanies. Satirical at- 
tack on sensationalism in church services, by “A Free Briton.” A 
letter from “Dramaticus” on the word theatrical and managerial 
methods. Epigram on a young gentleman’s presuming to preach in 
church. Lines on Henley, by “Poppy” (M). 

120. A satirical attack on a bill to reduce tithes. Allusions to 
an ode in imitation of Horace in the Courant, and to Ralph’s Muses 
Address to the King. 

121. Material cited in reply to a defense of the character of Wil- 
liam III in the London Journal. A letter from “A. H.” on “eastward 
adoration.” Verses spoken at the tripos at Cambridge; satire on a 











APPENDIX 313 





young curate eager for advancement. Note to a correspondent. 
The epitaph in the Abbey on the late Dr. John Woodward. A letter 
from “Philo-Dramaticus,’ contemptuous of A Lapland Entertain- 
ment at Drury Lane, in which the Cibbers had acted. 


May 


122. An essay on marriage. Lines: “The Double Contest,” a 
versification of the two anecdotes of the barrister (see ante). A 
satirical allusion to Bentley, by Bavius. Lines by Maevius on 
the character of William III, as presented by the London Journal 
(M). 

123. The character of the rich, supercilious young man. An attack 
by “Downright Honesty” on a new Greek grammar by George 
Thomson. Laudatory lines on Cheselden. Satire in Latin prose 
and English verse on a lawyer arguing against “robbing the dead” 
of their bodies for dissection. 

124. A continuation of the citations on the character of King 
William. Lines, by “Philo-Grub,” “To Caelia.” 

125. Two letters by “A. Z.,” one attacking Bentley’s critical 
method, and the other recalling an earlier quarrel of Bentley with 
Dr. Colbatch. An epigram on Bentley and Boyle. A burlesque 
letter from “F. Osborne” of the London Journal, attacking his op- 
ponent “S. T.” in the controversy over William III. 














June 


126. Letter signed “Obadiah”—a defence of the Quakers against 
a book by Patrick Smith, A Preservative against Quakerism. 
An abusive letter from “Claudia Rufina,’ enclosing verses, also 
abusive, with an editorial answer, especially to the charge of “‘steal- 
ing Pope’s name” (M). 

127. A series of letters concerning the fraudulent Charitable Cor- 
poration, and the association of the embezzlers with the Pretender 
at Rome. (This a controversy with the Free Briton.) Lines on the 
same point, by Bavius (M, misprinted W). A letter by “Pro- 
saicus,’ on Fielding’s Covent Garden Tragedy. Lines by Maevius 
on scandalous rumors concerning the Pretender’s birth (M). 

128. On the Charitable Corporation continued. —— An attack by 
“Dramaticus” on The Covent Garden Tragedy. “A Ballad on the 
Ridotto al Fresco” (A). 

129. On the Charitable Corporation concluded (signed Bavius). 
A letter from “Poeticus” to “Dramaticus,” insinuating that 
the latter has recanted, and enclosing “a recantation song,” an imi- 
tation of an ode by Horace. 











314 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


130. An attack on Fielding by “Prosaicus.” A letter from “A. B.” 
replying to a defence of Fielding by “Wm. Hint, Candle-Snuffer.” 
An attack on Fielding by “Dramaticus.”” A memorial of J. W., a 
prisoner in the Fleet. (See ante.) Two notices of the death of 
Lady Oglethorpe. A burlesque letter from “Wm. Hint” denying 
authorship of a letter signed with his name and concerning Field- 
ing’s play, with comment on The Covent Garden Tragedy (M). 





July 


131. An examination of some of Bentley’s emendations. Comic 
lines on Bentley (called Zoilus). A letter from “De Ripis” 
enclosing lines on Henley. 


132. A reply by “Dramaticus” to a defence of The Modern Hus- 
band in the Comedian. Ridicule of the Comedian by Bavius. An at- 
tack on Fielding’s Old Debauchees by ‘““Miso-Clerus” (M). An epi- 
gram on Fielding by “D. V.” Notice concerning the charter of 
the colony of Georgia. A translation of lines from the Aeneid. A 
letter from “Cluvienus” attacking the Free Briton. Epigram on The 
Universal Rehearsal, a paper which had attacked the Journal (M). 


133. A long attack by ‘“‘Publicus” on The Covent Garden Tragedy 
and The Old Debauchees. Epigram by “F. N.” on The Covent 
Garden Tragedy. A note concerning the founding of Georgia. 
A description of a “water-spout” in Pevensey Bay. Lines: “The 
Retirement,” by “Strephon.” 











134. A discussion of free will. A letter from “Dramaticus” at- 
tacking Fielding and the theatre managers. Latin lines ridiculing a 
pedantic archdeacon. Notice to contributors with especial re- 
gard to personal lampoons (M). Paraphrase of a passage from 
Horace. 





August 


135. A letter from “Theatricus” ascribing the degeneracy of 
modern youth to the degeneracy of the stage. A reply by “Dramati- 
cus” to “Dramaticus Senior,” who had answered him in the Courant, 
with comment by Bavius. An answer by “Publicus” to a de- 
fence of Fielding in the Daily Post. An epigram by Maevius on 
Fielding’s indecency (M). 





136. A letter on the discussion of free-will in 134. A review of the 
controversy over Fielding’s plays, by Bavius (M). An ironical 
defence of the Covent Garden Tragedy, with a summary of the 
plot, by “B. B.” (M). 

137. A letter signed “Eliot” in the discussion of free-will. An 
analysis of some of Bentley’s emendations, by Bavius. A letter by 
“Philo-Bent” offering an emendation of Chevy Chace. Com- 








APPENDIX SD 


ment by Bavius on Fielding’s Prolegomena to The Covent Garden 
Tragedy, in which he had derided the Journal. Lines to Miss Raftor 
(Kitty Clive). 

138. An attack by “Prosaicus” on Fielding as a dramatic writer. 
A letter concerning divine judgments. A letter from ‘‘Hobbinol 
Lubbin” asking admission to the Society, and submitting a transla- 
tion of the prologue to Persius. 





139. Article on “answering” arguments, with special reference to 
papists and non-conformists, and to Curll, Henley, Bowman, and 
Tindall. Poem in praise of Rich and attacking Cibber, with 
editorial note disclaiming support. 





September 


140. Lines “On Divine Poetry” by a school-boy, submitted by 
“M. B.,” who says it puts the degenerate authors of the age to 
shame. A letter by “The Inspector” on the value of good books of 
travel. Lines: “The laments of a true lover for the death of a lady,” 
submitted by “Pastor Plorans.’”’ Lines: “A begging epistle in rhime 
from a poor poet,’ from “Ra. Argill.’’ An editorial note on 
publishing puffs, and notice of difficulty with an advertiser. Lines 
on Concanen, “On the new Attorney General.” 


141. The Fielding quarrel resumed by Bavius, with abusive 
answer to opponents and to attacks on the Journal in the Daily Post. 
Epigram by Maevius on Fielding. Hit at the Register for 
plagiarism. Lines on the acting of Moliére’s play under the two 
titles of Mock Doctor and Forced Physician, by “Poppy.” 


142. Heading from Young’s first Epistle to Mr. Pope. Ironical 
letter on coffee-house conversation, satirising loose religious and 
political views, by “D. D.” A letter of a clergyman (“Mr. A— 
F—s”) to his curate versified—satire on clerical avarice. An 
obscure epigram, published to please the author. Explanation of 
changes made in the epigram on Concanen in 140; it had been pub- 
lished in its original form in Fog’s. Verse fable on poet-asses, with 
allusions to Pope and Cibber. 











143. Continuation of argument against judgments, from 138. A 
letter from “Prosaicus” attacking a new play, The Devil of a Duke. 
Letter from “A. H.” attacking two of Theobald’s emendations 
of Shakespeare. Verses attacking “W—” [Welsted], by “P. B.” 





October 


144. Reprint from an introduction to The State of the Nation, by 
“John Gabriel.” Two poems on John Gabriel. Letter deploring the 
death of the actor Wilks, and attacking an actor who had played 


316 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Macduff, by “Philo-Dramaticus.” An epigram replying to verses on 
Rich in 139. A repudiation of Grubiana, republished as The 
Grub-Street Miscellany. Political verses “A Dialogue between P. & 
W.” [Pulteney and Walpole ?]. 


145. A second letter on coffee-house conversation, by “D. D.” A 
letter from “Esther Zealous” a Quaker, attacking Ruth Collins’ The 
Friendly Writer (apparently burlesque). Letter from “Philo-Dives,” 
author of the verses on Rich in 139, to the writer of the answer in 
144. A letter from “A. B.,” with comment, on clergy of less 
than £100 a year acting as justices of the peace. Verses on a quack 
of great pretences, and honored by royalty. 








146. Continuation by Bavius of the examination of Bentley’s 
emendations of Milton. The Curate’s answer to the clergyman’s 
letter (see 142), versified. An answer in verse of “Philo-His- 
torio” (later “Histrio”) to ‘““Philo-Dives.” Verses to Henley by a 
“Mr. Shelton,” apparently a criminal, charging him with seducing 
the author from an honest life. 


147. A print, “The Art and Mystery of Printing,” as illustration 
to a dialogue on newspapers and booksellers. (To be cont.) 
“Errata of the Learned” :—examples from Mead and Chambers. 
Epigram by Maevius “On the liberty of the press.” 

148. “The Grub-Street Journal Extraordinary,” October 30, 1732. 
Reprint of leading article in 147, with a continuation. Also a long 
“explication” of the picture. A poem to the Lord Mayor. Cuts of 
the arms of the city companies. 








November 


149. On the itch of writing, by “H. W.” with a note by Bavius. 
Letter from “Miso Diabolus” on fashionable use of “devil,” “devil- 
ish,” etc. The birthday ode, with notes by Bavius. Verses to 
the Lord Mayor, by Maevius. ; 





150. Heading from Young’s first Epistle. Further explication by 
“Bibliopola” of the print in 148. An anecdote of Alexander and a 
poetaster, Choerilus, by “A. B.” A burlesque of Cibber’s birthday 
ode. A reply by “Philo Histrio” to “Philo Dives, alias H. W.” 
An epigram by Maevius on Henley. 





151. Moral essay on virtue and advancing age. A letter by “Ec- 
clesiasticus” on Henley’s history, especially in regard to his leaving 
the church. Burlesque proposals for a work on “Terra In- 
cognita” by “Piraticus.”’ Verses on the Laureate’s last ode. 





152. A continuation of material from John Gabriel in 144. Lines 
contributed by “J. B.’ -—— Two odes of Anacreon, translated into 
Latin and English, by “D. D.” 


APPENDIX 317 


153. A discussion of St. Andrew’s Day and the order of St. 
Andrew, by Bavius. A note by “D. D.” on the odes in 152, with 
other English versions. Notices to contributors, with allusions 
to John Gabriel and Bentley. A note on one of Henley’s advertise- 
ments, with comment. 





December 


154. Attack on the artifices of booksellers especially in stealing 
well-known names, with especial reference to medical works by 
John Allen and James Alleyne. A prologue addressed to the free- 
masons. The epilogue on the same occasion. 


155. The attack on the work of “James Alleyne” continued, by 
“Tsaac de Duobus, N. M.” Satire on the theatrical audience. An 
epigram by Maevius on Henley. A discussion of one of Hen- 
ley’s advertisements. The third ode of Anacreon, in Latin and 
English. 

156. An answer to the attack on Alleyne. Signed statement from 
Nathan Bailey, disclaiming connection with the Alleyne. On 
Henley’s boasted connections with great people. Verses on “Sally,” 
a waitress. 











157. Letter from “Jeremy Hint,” suggesting that money won at 
cards be given to the poor. Letter from “X” pointing out a chemical 
error in Alleyne. Letter commending the Journal for its attack on 
booksellers, and telling of the mutilation by a bookseller of Duck’s 
“Hermitage”; an authentic copy of the verses enclosed, with a note 





by Bavius. A further attack on Henley’s puffs. Epigrams on 
Woolston, and on Christmas. 
1733 
January 


158. Passage from Oppian’s Cynegeticks, in English, submitted 
by “Graecanicus.”” Note from “N. J.” pointing out errors in Alleyne. 
A prologue to Phormuo, at a school performance, contributed by 
“Philo-Grubaeus.” A continuation of the attack on Henley. 
Verses on Henley, by Maevius. 

159. On the origin of the Grubstreet Society, by “A. H.’” The 
New Year’s Ode, with notes. Lines: “Good Advice to Sally” 
(ci, 156). 

160. Notes on the New Year’s Ode, by Bavius. A eulogy of 
the late Rev. Mr. Smith, master of Tiverton School, by “Philo- 
Tivertoniae.” A ballad on the excise: “The Constitution Clap’d.” 

161. Continuation of material from John Gabriel (cf, 144 and 
152). An Ode, submitted by “A. B.” Comment by Bavius on 
Henley’s defence of Cibber’s reference to the Muses as “Sicilian 
sisters.” Lines: “Sally’s Answer.” 














318 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


February 


162. Further notes on Cibber’s ode, contributed by “Calliopius.” 
Letter from ‘‘Medonius,” a new student at Cambridge—satire on a 
snobbish, effeminate fop. Letter and verses attacking shyster law- 
yers, with an epigram in answer. Further comment on Henley’s 
defence of “Sicilian sisters.” Doggerel verse on young Cibber. 





163. Continuation of the letter on Grubeans in 159, discussing the 
origin of the Masons. More “Errata of the Learned,” contributed 
by “Calliopius.” Verses: “The Town Lady’s Answer.” “An 
Ode or Ballad,” burlesque of Cibber’s style, and satire on his 
“Sicilian sisters.” 


164. Letter by “Somebody” attacking the Cibbers’ re-made plays. 
Tronical defence by ‘‘Will Traffick” of the excise. Epilogue to the 
Eunuch, acted at Westminster School. A petition of the ladies 
of London against the excise. Notice of a benefit performance of 
Henry VIII. Verses to “J. M. Alchymist” by “S. S.” 


165. An attack on “Betty, or the Country Bumpkins” by “Some- 
body.” Letter from “Calliopius’” on various superstitions. Con- 
temptuous reply by “Some-body” to an attack on Gay’s Achilles, in 
the Daily Courant. Comment on this attack, with implication 
that Ralph was the author. An answer to the epigram on “J. M. 
Alchymist”—political satire. 











March 


166. Ironical essay on the present high level of literature and 
taste, by Bavius. A letter from “Spinosa Taffety,” alluding ob- 
scurely to some ridiculous person, with a note by Bavius indicating 
that he does not understand the allusion. Verses in Latin and Eng- 
lish, “to Dr. Freind in Westminster School.” Letter and verses 
on acting, with allusions to Henley and Ned Ward, by “Philo- 
Histrio.” 


167. An attack on Caelia, or the Perjured Lover, and on the 
managers at Drury Lane, by ‘“Some-body.” A letter by “D. P.” at- 
tacking the Daily Courant and the London Journal. Epigram by 
Maevius on the lack of gratitude in political leaders. A sum- 
mary of Curl’s life of Wilks, the actor. An epigram on Sarah 
Malcolm, the murderess, by ‘“‘Dactyl.” 








168. Article by Bavius against the Gentleman’s and the London 
Magazine, retailing a feud between them. A letter from “No One,” 
enclosing a list of comic names—‘Barrel, a tapster,” etc. A 
letter to “Some-body,” on certain errors of his concerning Shake- 
speare. An epigram on the pretended courage of one “Sir Prim,” 
contributed by “Philopatria” (political satire). 





APPENDIX Sug) 


169. Letter by “Philoclerus,’ urging that sequestrated lands be 
returned to the church—pity for the condition of the poor clergy. 
Lines: “The Retired Patriot,’ by “Philo-Grubaeus-Cantab.” 
Letter from Hippisley the actor, denying that he has ever libelled or 
attacked his friends. Verses to “Mr. Orator’” [Henley] on his 
advertisements, by “Conundrum.” 

170. An attack on a projected new edition of Stephen’s The- 
saurus, by “Calliopius,” with a note by Bavius. Continuation of 
material from John Gabriel. A “true copy” of an abusive letter 
from an M. P. to his constituents. Henley’s Oratory Transactions 
versified by Maevius. 








April 


171. Attack on proposals for a new General Dictionary. Answer 
by Bavius to an attack by the Gentleman’s on his article in 168. 
Epigram by “Dactyl” on the courtiers’ support of the excise. 
Translation of a fable of Phaedrus by Maevius. 


172. Satire on the extension of the excise to Dullness, by “Scrib- 
lerus cum Dasho,” with allusions to Cibber, Henley, Curl, the news- 
papers, etc. (to be cont.). A defence of Alleyne’s medical work (see 
ante). Letter by “B. T.” attacking the prospectus of the new 
edition of Stephens’ Thesaurus. Note on the subject of piracy, of 
which the Journal and the Gentleman’s had accused each other. Epi- 
gram on the excise, by Maevius. 

173. Letter by Maevius replying to an attack in the Free Briton 
on the Council of London for their opposition to the excise. An 
epigram on the Free Briton, by “Dactyl.” 

174. Continuation of article on Dullness in 172, chiefly against 
Henley (‘‘Pufferus’”). Attack on Rich, manager of Covent Garden, 
by “No-body.” A burlesque petition for an appointment as privy 
councillor, and discussion as to why it was refused. Verses: “The 
Fortunate Disappointment.” Satirical comment on a religious 
conference of women held at Scarborough. “A Song.” 














May 


175. A letter by ‘“Ecclesiasticus” on an error made by Sir Isaac 
Newton in his “Observations on the prophecies of Daniel.” A letter 
from a young man (‘“‘L. R.”) in answer to a proposal of marriage 
made by a young lady. Ironical proposals for a chapel of ease 
at Scarborough, for ladies. An answer to the complaints of the new 
editors of Stephens’ Thesaurus, by “Calliopius.’” Epigram on 
Charles I, betrayed by the Scotch. 


176. A letter from the “Fiddle Faddle Club,” satire on Ladies’ 
Clubs. A conclusion of the article on the excise on Dullness (see 





320 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


172, 174). Lines: “On Good and Ill-Nature—To Mr. Pope.” 
Letter on an English Academy, with discussion of the phrase “never 
so much,” by “The Censor of Great Britain.” Verses by Maevius on 
Henley. 





177. Declaration of the Journal’s impartiality, by Bavius. Answer 
by “Some-body” to the attack on Rich in 174. A letter suggesting 
penalties to prevent unhappy marriages, by “Sancho Panca.” Verses 
written by Walpole on a window in the Tower, when confined there 
ray LZ An answer by Maevius to “seven lies” with which 
Henley had charged the Journal, by Maevius. An epigram on Hen- 
ley, by “Dactyl.” 

178. A reply by “A. B.” to the complaints of the editors of the 
General Dictionary. Letter attacking Theophilus Cibber as manager, 
author, and actor. Letter from “J. Ralph” replying to charges made 
by “Some-body” in 178. An epigram on the Hyp-Doctor and Free 
Briton, by Maevius. Verses on the last Free Briton by “Dactyl.” 


179. A letter in defense, by the “Authors” of the General Dic- 
tionary. Lines, submitted by “‘Grubbeanicus,” to a gentleman who 
had bound up Swift, Pope, and Fielding together. A reply by 
““Some-body” to Ralph’s letter in 178. Further sarcasm on the re- 
ligious conference at Scarborough. An epigram on “Stonecastle” 
(the Universal Spectator) as a plagiarist. 











June 


180. Letter attacking T. Cibber for his methods as manager, and 
for stirring up dissension among the actors, by “Musaeus” (apropos 
of war between actors and patentees). A letter by “‘Philo-Dramati- 
cus” supporting the actors. “An Ode,” by a young lady. A letter 
by “Anglus” attacking the political theories of the Craftsman. An 
epigram on Pope, on his writing Gay’s epitaph. 

181. Letter on the theatrical quarrel, generally favorable to 
actors; suggests various sources from which managers might recruit 
their companies. A letter submitting a passage from Vanbrugh’s 
Aesop relative to the theatrical quarrel. Verses: “Upon the poet 
laureate’s being expelled the House of Lords.” Notice of the 
death of Pope’s mother. Verses: “Plot for Plot,” by “Hibernicus.” 

182. An attack by “Democritus” on news items in the papers. A 
burlesque advertisement by “Democritus” of an old woman who “cuts 
folks for the simples.” A specimen index to Bayle’s Dictionary 
(article on Adam), by “Publicus.” Letter from “Sarah Townly” 
submitting verses. An epigram on the 204 who voted against 
the excise, with a note that 204 is a mystical number, the sum of 
the squares of numbers from one to eight. “A receipt to cure a love 
fit,” lines by “Democritus.” 











APPENDIX 321 


183. An essay on curiosity. Narrative of a dream, satire on fe- 
male honor, by “Oculatus Henroost.” “Verses made at sea.”” —— 
Verses on “The Flea,” a parody of Phillips’ lines to Cuzzoni, by 
“Tronicus.” 

July 


184. Comment on a proposed edition of Chambers’ Dictionary, by 
“Publicola.” A scheme for establishing the theatre on a new basis, 
by “Philo-Britannus.” Satire on the wonderful work of news 
writers, by Bavius. Anacreon, Ode III, translated by “D. D.” 
Satire on publication of wills, dying speeches, etc., with hits at 
Curll, by “Scriblerus Incurabilis.” Epigram on the Universal Spec- 
tator. 

185. Account of a journey to Paris, in an illiterate letter from a 
young country squire (“W. Boobykins”) “To his papa.” A letter 
from “A. B.” enclosing verses on a late marriage. The epitaph 
of Daniel Pulteney in Westminster. Letter from “Scriblerus Incura- 
bilis,” desiring a cure for scribbling. Lines by “Epigrammaticus” 
praising Duley above Gervase and Hogarth. 

186. Letter by “Publicola” on the administration of the law and 
the exploitation of the poor. “Warbletta: A Suburban Eclogue,” 
submitted by “Philo-Histrio.” ——- A letter from “Democritus” on 
the importance of punctuation, with a jury list of 1619 in which all 
the surnames are titles, eg. “Henry Prince of Godmanchester.” 
Notice to correspondents. Epigram by Maevius on magazine puffs. 

187. Attack on T. Cibber’s part in the theatrical quarrel by “Mu- 
saeus.” Continuation by Bavius of his discussion of newspapers in 
184. Anacreon, Ode IV, translated by “D. D.” An account by 
“Democritus” of extravagant feasts in English history. Epigram by 
“Dactyl” on a seditious speech said to have been printed for Gilliver 
—hits at several booksellers. 











August 


188. Burlesque account by “T. T.” of a journey to Wells. A 
criticism by “B. T.” of Bladen’s translation of Caesar’s account of 
Briton. Anacreon, Ode V, translated by “D. D.” Sarcasm on 
the style of the London Journal. 

189. A pompous letter in the style of Henley. Two letters on the 
farce The Stage Mutineers, the second by “Philo-Musus.” Letter on 
the vanity of titles, degrees, etc., by ‘““Democritus.” An obscure 
epitaph contributed by “Democritus.” An epigram on a rapacious 
lawyer, by “Dullman Clericus.” 








190. Heading, lines from Pope. Letter on foolish medical fads, 
especially the use of mercury, by “Democritus.” Suggestions for the 
new Chambers’ Dictionary. Continuation by Bavius of his remarks 


$22 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


on newspapers (cf. 184, 187). A Latin “imitation” and a Latin 
“translation” of Anacreon, Ode IV, by “F. C.” A contemptu- 
ous letter by “P. M.” to the author of the songs in The Devil of a 
Duke. Verses on Cibber’s erecting a booth in Smithfield. 

191. Remarks by Bavius on Voltaire’s “Letters concerning the 
English Nation,” and a letter exposing Voltaire’s inaccuracies re- 
garding the Quakers, by “Ezra.” Humorous letter asking Bavius to 
explain whether a bridle is part of a harness. Lines “To a Young 
Lady,” by R. Savage. Note on the bridle letter, above. A letter 
in Irish dialect, by “Democritus,” from an Irishman desiring to be 
king of Poland. An epigram on a priest and a lawyer, with one in 
reply by Maevius. 

192. A letter by “Old England” on “Tindal’s double apostasy.” 
Translation by “Incog.” of the obscure epitaph in 189, with a note 
by Bavius. Burlesque rules of conduct, by “Democritus.” Lines: “A 
Riddle.” Lines written at a horse-race, submitted by “E. B.” 
An epigram on the lawyer of 189, by “Dullman.” Lines: “The 
Divine of Taste.” A further note on harness and bridle. 


September 


193. An attack on the Free Briton, especially for an article on 
education, by Maevius, with annotations by Bavius. Lines “The 
Valetudinarian,” submitted by “Philo-Grubaeus Cantab.” 

194. Further discussion of newspapers, by Bavius. A letter on 
gossip, by “Democritus.”” Anacreon, Ode VI, translated by “D. D.” 
A note on a picture of Christ dressed as a Jesuit, with an epi- 
gram by a Dominican, translated by Maevius, against Jesuits. 

195. A letter by “Witch of Endor,” attacking the shifting re- 
ligious attitude of the London Journal. A letter by “Democritus,” 
replying to his letter on gossip in 194. Lines to Mrs. Pritchard, by 
“R. S.” —— A letter and lines satirizing the stupid young country 
squire, by “Simon Speechless.” 

196. Further material from John Gabriel (see 170 and ante). 
Another letter on “cutting for the simples,” by “Democritus.” 
Verses: “The Modern Goliah”—attack on free thinkers. An at- 
tack on the Free Briton by “P. P—re,” for republishing easily ac- 
cessible material. Letter in pompous language by “Sempronius,” 
satirizing an Oxford preacher of the previous Sunday. Lines ridi- 
culing a lady’s literary taste. 

October 


197. An attack on inoculation by “Democritus,” with a history of 
it, “pretended to be by Voltaire,” added by Bavius. Lines: “To Miss, 
etc.” Notes and an epigram on Henley. An obscure humorous 
note. 























APPENDIX S23 


198. A letter from “Plain Dealer” attacking the Journal for its 
position in the theatrical quarrel. An application from “Matt. Mole” 
for a job as news writer, with hits at the Cibbers. Verses: “The 
Puppy-Pupil-Monger,” contributed by ‘“Damasippus.”’ Notes to 
contributors. “Ode to Celia,” by “R. S.” 


199. Sarcastic account of Tindall’s life, as published by Curll. 
Another illiterate letter by “Democritus,” on “cutting for simples.” 
An epigram of Martial, translated by Maevius. Satire on Hen- 
ley’s puffs, by “Nicholas Stentor.” An epigram of Martial, trans- 
lated. 


200. A print, “The Art of Trimming,” with various interpreta- 
tions, especially an application to the scandal of Eustace Budgell 
and Tindall’s will, by Bavius. An ode to the Lord Mayor, by 
Maevius. 











November 


201. A review of Clifton’s State of Physics, in general unfavora- 
ble, by “A. A.” Further interpretation, in the form of a dialogue 
between members of the Society, of the picture in 200, satire on 
politics, church, South Sea Company, etc. Another interpretation by 
“H, W.”’—satire on newspapers, with note that it is erroneous. 
A letter from “Osborne” (the London Journal) protesting that he is 
a man, not a woman. An Ode to the Lord Mayor, by Maevius. A note 
to correspondents. 


202. A letter on the state of the theatre. Cibber’s birthday ode 
for 1733, with notes by Bavius. Laudatory epigram on Dr. Dela- 
maigne, contributed by “Eusebius.” Letter by “Moll Brazen 
Face” on a proposal to fill up Fleet-Ditch with old maids. Verses by 
Voltaire on the king of Poland, translated by Maevius. 

203. A reply by “Laertius” to “A. A.” on Clifton in 201. Letter 
on marriage by “I, per se I.” The eighteenth idyll of Theocritus, 
translated by “Pastor Fido.” A list of conundrums. An “Ode to 
the Poet Laureate,” by Maevius. A note to correspondents. 











204. Discussion of the scandal over Tindall’s will, with notes by 
Bavius. Verses of Petronius, translated by “Eusebius.” A note 
to correspondents, with a warning to the Whitehall Evening Post 
against piracy. 





205. Attack on quacks, by “Aesculapius,” with extended comment 
by Bavius. Epigram on the Budgell-Tindall scandal. Letter 
from “Plain-Dealer” commenting on Budgell’s thinness of wit, with 
an epigram on the same point by “Conundrum.” A humorous epitaph 
on a physician. Note concerning the “Epistle from a Nobleman to 
a Doctor of Divinity.” 





324 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


December 


206. Further discussion of Tindall’s will, which is reprinted. 
Verses: “The Two Thousand Pounds Bond.” A passage from 
Jonson’s Poetaster, as “advice to a Nobleman,” the author of the 
epistle to a doctor of divinity. 





207. Satire on church manners, by “Martha Meanwell.”’ Conven- 
tional verses, by “Eusebius.” A passage from the Epistle of a Noble- 
man, with comment. A reprint of the Bee’s reply to the epi- 
gram on Budgell in 205, with resolutions by the Society. Epigram 
by “Poppy.” A note to contributors. 

208. The Budgell-Tindall scandal continued. An epigram on 
“Ward,” in prison as a dog-poisoner, with a tragic anecdote on the 
subject. Verses by Maevius in reply to some in the Daily Courant 
on a benefit for Dennis. 

209. A letter by “Philo-Clericus” on Christmas pie. Verses to the 
author of The Epistle from a Nobleman. The Budgell-Tindall 
scandal continued. Verses on attacks on the Journal, apropos of 
Budgell, signed ironically “E. B.” Note to contributors. 











1734 
January 


210. Attack on the Magazines for theft, with allusion to the 
Tindall scandal, by “Will Whimsy.” A reply to “Miss Meanwell” 
in 207, by “Theophilus.’”” Comment by Bavius on “Whimsy’s” letter. 
“Epitaph on a Young Lady by Richard Savage, Esq.” —— The New 


Year’s Ode, and verses by the bell-man of St. James. 


211. Notes by Bavius on Cibber’s Ode. Burlesque articles of peace 
in the theatrical war. An epilogue to the Adelphi at Westminster 
School. An acrostic on Mary Hawker, contributed by “E. I.” 
A prologue to the Eunuch at Cadington School. 


212. Letter by ““Townly” on church manners. The Tindall scandal 
continued. Lines: “The Mistake,” by “P. P.”—hits at Budgell, Curll, 
and Henley. Letter on the rise in price of French wines, with 
hits at the Dunces, especially Cibber. 

213. Letter by “A. Z.” in reply to the letter on Clifton in 201. A 
petition of the letter “H” for recognition. Lines ridiculing Cibber’s 
Odes, by “I. B.” A list of old Scotch military terms. Lines on 
certain medical remedies, by ‘“Philanthropos.” 


214. Letter by “Jeremiah Gimcrack” on the relation between 
authors and booksellers, with comment by Bavius. Lines on King 
Charles’ Day, by Maevius. Lines by ‘“‘Dactyl” on verses in the 
Bee “in praise of adoption,” apropos of the Tindall scandal. 














, 


APPENDIX 325 


February 

215. An attack by “Atticus” on The Lady’s Revenge. Lines from 
the Odyssey, translated by “Eusebius,” with sarcastic comment and 
the same passage from Pope’s translation, with notes, by Bavius. 
A prologue and epilogue to The Keepers, a ballad opera, with a 
depreciatory note. 

216. Letter defending The Lady's Revenge, by “Terentianus.” 
Note of a threatened attack on Swift, with a defence of him by his 
parishioners, libellous verses involved in the affair, and a note by 
Bavius. A list of the effects of “Brother Fannius,” deceased 
(Lord Hervey). Translation of a Greek epigram. 

217. Essay on praising people for what they take most pride in. 
The Tindall scandal continued. Epigram of Anacreon, translated by 
Maevius. Epigram on the Tindall scandal, by “Dactyl.” 

218. A defence of The Lady’s Revenge by “Candidus,” with re- 
ply by Bavius. A humorous account of the theatrical war. 


March 


219. Letter from “Tom Meanwell” asking the Journal to discuss 
questions of trade, and suggesting Fishery. Letter criticising Pope’s 
poetry, with reply by Bavius, boasting of impartiality. Lines “On 
Florella,” by “Eugenius.” The Tindall scandal continued. 
Letter signed “L. Gilliver” on Theobald’s remarks on “The Epistle 
on Verbal Criticism.” Lines by Maevius on Henley. 

220. Attack on a Greek emendation in the preface to Theobald’s 
Shakespeare. The Tindall scandal continued. Epigram: “Short, but 
good, advice to E. B. Esq.” [Budgell], by Maevius. Further 
analysis of Tindall’s will, by Bavius. Lines by “Dactyl” on Budgell’s 
medals in honor of Tindall. 

221. Letter advising stage censorship, with attack on Chronon- 
hotonthologos and the taste of the audience. Bavius on the necessity 
of delay in publishing letters; remarks on The Lady's Revenge and 
Theobald’s preface to his Shakespeare. Lines: “An Epistle to the 
Lady Patroness.” Lines by “Amen,” the speech of the City 
Recorder to the Prince of Orange. 

222. On fisheries, by ‘““Tom Meanwell.” The character of the Uni- 
versity prig, by “Confusus Adeptus.” Stanzas, by “Eugenius.” 
Lines: “A Receipt to be Happy,” political satire. 


April 
223. On the present state of the law, by “Tom Telltroth.” The 
Tindall scandal continued. Lines: “To a Noble Lord [Hervey] on 
his late most incomparable Poem,” by R. S.” Lines on Bud- 
gell’s medal in honor of Tindall, by “Dactyl.” Epigram by Maevius. 





























326 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


224. On being quiet in church. Note by Bavius on the quarrel over 
The Lady’s Revenge, and an abusive letter by “Baviophilus.” Lines 
“To Mr. Maevius” by “J. W.” Letter by “Bartholomew Minor” 
on an ogling clergyman. “The Monkey and Jupiter,” a fable in 
verse by “R. P.” 


225. On Fisheries, continued by “Tom Meanwell.” A prize ode 
on Tindall, examined. Lines to Mrs. Barbier (actress), con- 
tributed by “Philo-Histrio.” Notice of a benefit for an actor named 
Rochelle. 


226. An attack on “modern infidels’—“Tolands and Tindalls.” At- 
tack on electoral abuses. Comment on the Tindall Ode (225) con- 
tinued. Letter from “J. T.” and comment, satire on the Lon- 
don Journal (“Osborne”). A letter from E. Cooper (actress) beg- 
ging interest in her benefit performance. 











May 
227. On the state of the law continued from 223. Description of a 
penniless poet in a garret by “Omicron.” —— Letter of thanks 


from E. Cooper. Epigram by “Conundrum.” 


228. On criticising other men’s wives, by “Tom Tell-troth.” 
Lines: “The Prospect” by “Q. T.” Letter signed ironically 
“Lewis Theobald,” asking interest of the Freemasons in his benefit, 
with a cut. Lines by ““Tweedledum Tweedledee” on T. Cibber’s mar- 
rying Miss Arne. 

229. Attack by “N. A.” on Theobald’s Greek citations in his 
preface. Further comment by Bavius, declaring Theobald led astray 
by admiration of Bentley. Comment on false Latin in an in- 
scription printed in the Daily Post, by “Somebody.” Letter on the 
excise, by “Abracadabra.” Epigram by Maevius on Budgell and 
Tindall. 

230. On the tobacco excise, by “Oliver Grub.” Attack by “Atti- 
cus” on a “Survey of Public Buildings” in the Register. A 
vision of the wickedness of England and anger of God. Epigram 
by Maevius on party quarrels. 

231. On gardens. The Tindall scandal continued, by “B. B.”’ —— 
Epigram by “Dactyl,” political satire. 











June 


232. Letter signed ‘““Lew. Theobald,” replying to the attack on his 
Greek emendations, with answer by Bavius. Reply to angry 
comments in the Register concerning the Journal’s attack on the 
Survey of Public Buildings. Epigram by Maevius on “the Grub- 
street Architect.” 





APPENDIX $27 


233. Long criticism by Bavius of an installment of the Critical 
Survey in the Register. Epigram on the same subject, by 
Maevius. 

234. Another letter from Theobald on his Greek emendations, 
with comment by Bavius. Anacreon, Ode VII, translated by “D. D.” 
Reply by “N. A.” to Theobald’s strictures on his comments on 
the Greek emendations. Further comment on the Register’s attack 
on the Journal. Epigram by Maevius on the same point. 

235. Essay on assorted subjects, by “Will Whimsey.” Further 
attack by Bavius on the Critical Survey. Political epigram by 
“Dactyl.” 











July 


236. A burlesque of the Critical Survey by “Vitruvius Grub- 
eanus.” Further comment by Bavius. Paraphrase of a Latin 
distich, by “Garbagio de Torvi.” 

237. “The Critical Review . . . Examined.” (To be cont.). —— 
Attack by Bavius on the Critical Review. 

238. On the beauty of morning, by “Academicus.” Continuation 
of “The Critical Review . . . Examined,” by Mr. Hiram. Anacreon, 
Ode VIII, translated by “D. D.” Lines on the marriage of a 
Mrs. Cash, worth £10,000. Verses by Maevius on The Critical 
Survey. 

239. Mr. Hiram continued. Anacreon, Ode IX, translated by “D. 
D.” —— Lines on the Duchess of Marlborough by “A. W.” 








August 


240. A humorous will, moral satire, with remarks on attitudes 
toward death. Mr. Hiram continued. Bavius on the Critical 
Survey. An ode on the marriage of the Duke of Portland. 


241. Mr. Hiram continued. Anacreon, Ode X, translated by “D. 
Dy) Attack on the author of The Dramatic Sessions, by “The 
Laesos.” Epigram. 

242. Poem “To Mr. Ellis” (the painter), said by the contributor 
to have been found on waste paper. Mr. Hiram continued. Inscrip- 
tion on a monument to the late Earl of Warwick. A reply to 
“The Laesos” in 241, by “Scriblerus Theatricus,” author of The 
Dramatic Sessions. Anacreon, Ode XI, translated by “D. D.” 


243. Mr. Hiram continued. Lines by ““Tom the Water-man,” po- 
litical satire, and allusion to Cibber and Henley. Reply by “The 
Laesos” to “Scriblerus Theatricus.” Anacreon, Ode XII, translated 
lox? 71D aya Deas 

244. Burlesque will of a naturalist, signed “Jonathan Wimble.”’ 
Mr. Hiram continued. “Verses to a young lady,” by “Erronous.” 














328 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 





Further attack by Bavius on the Critical Survey. Epigram on 
the same point, naming Ralph as the author. 


September 


245. Mr. Hiram continued. Epigram on Cibber, by Maevius. —— 
Bavius on the Critical Survey continued. Epigram on Ralph. 

246. Satire on the bedside manner of an apothecary, by “John-a- 
Nokes.” A burlesque of the confused and cryptic legal style, signed 
“Oliver Puzzle-Cause,” and contributed by “W. R.” Mr. Hiram con- 
tinued. Anacreon, Ode XIII, translated by “D. D.” Comment on 
the practice of reprinting material already published and easily ac- 
cessible. One of Henley’s advertisements, and notice of a puppet 
show, ‘““Punch’s Oratory.” Epigram by “Dactyl” on pirating book- 
sellers. 

247. Letter denouncing the reprinting of standard works, with 
Rapin’s History as an example—an attack on it, by “B. T.” Mr. 
Hiram continued. Lines “An Impromptu.” Bavius on the Crit- 
ical Survey, continued. Lines: “On Wit’—attack on the Dunces. 

248. The history of the case of John Goole and Margaret Hudson. 
Mr. Hiram continued. “An Epitaph, for Miss R. P.” Reply by 
“W. H.” to the verses “On Wit” in 247. Epigram on Ralph. 


October 


249. The Goole-Hudson case continued. Mr. Hiram continued. 
—— Reply to the verses answering those on Wit, in 248. 

250. The Goole-Hudson case continued, with a note by Bavius. 
Anacreon, Ode XIV, translated by “D. D.” An epigram from 
the Daily Post on Henley with comment. 

251. Mr. Hiram continued. “The case of the proprietors of the 
stock of the York-buildings company.” Humorous note on a 
sermon to be let off by a Rev. Mr. Musquet. Anacreon, Ode XV, 
translated by “D. D.” Epigram on Henley, by Maevius. 

252. Mr. Hiram continued. The York-buildings case continued. 
Anacreon, Ode XVI, translated by “D. D.” Bavius on the 
Critical Survey, continued. Epigram by Maevius on Ralph. 

253. Letter praising the actor Stephens at Covent Garden, and 
comparing him with Cibber and Quin, to their disadvantage, by 
“Somebody.” Mr. Hiram continued. The York-buildings case con- 
tinued. Ode to the Lord Mayor, by Maevius, with allusion to 
Cibber, and the quarrel with the Register over the Critical Survey. 























November 


254. Attack by “Patriophilus” on a French company at the Hay- 
market. Mr. Hiram continued. The York-buildings case continued. 


APPENDIX 329 


—— A reply by “Outis” to the attack on Cibber in 253. Anacreon, 
Ode XVII, translated by “D. D.” 

255. Mr. Hiram continued. Defense of Stephens, the actor, by 
“Philo-Stephanus,’ with comment by Bavius on ‘“‘Outis’s” letter in 
254. Lines on Gunsmith’s Anodyne Pills, with a reply in verse 
by Maevius. 

256. Mr. Hiram continued. A letter by “Laertius” on the treat- 
ment of female “vapors.” Bavius on the birthday ode. Bavius 
on the Stephens-Outis quarrel. Anacreon, Ode XVIII, translated by 
SP): IDE 

257. Long attack on Ward’s Pill and Drop, by “Misoquackus.” 
Long prose obituary of Mrs. Grace Butler of Selmeston in Sussex. 
[Russel had been Rector of Selmeston. | Letter on the terms of 
the deed to a “small clay house’”—satire on the legal difficulties of 
the poor. Note to contributors. Epigram on “Outis Junior,” by 
“Conundrum.” 











December 


258. Mr. Hiram continued. Letter by “Timothy Zeal,” analyzing 
a letter he had found, which he thinks shows evidence of a great 
conspiracy. A burlesque love letter, contributed by “T. A.” Ana- 
creon, Ode XIX, translated by “D. D.” The Outis controversy 
presented in doggerel by Maevius. 


259. Announcement by Bavius that Ward has not replied to the 
attack in 257. An attack on Ward, by “Amiculus.” Mr. Hiram con- 
tinued. Lines: “The Gentleman,” by Richard Savage. Criticism 
of N. Tindall’s translation of Rapin, by “A Subscriber.” Reply to 
“Misoquackus” by “the author of the Purging Sugar Plums.” Letter 
by “Philanthopos” on the death of dogs which had been given 
Ward’s Pills. Comment on a defence of Ward by Henley, with an 
epigram on the same point by “Conundrum.” 


260. Summary (with quotation) of an attack on Ward by Dr. 
Daniel Turner. On false notices of death in the dailies. 


261. Letter defending Ward and answering “Misoquackus,” by 
“Obadiah Anti-clysterpipus.” Letter by “Philagathus” against Ward, 
but disagreeing with statements of Dr. Turner. Attack on Tindall’s 
Rapin on account of omissions, by “Another Subscriber.” Mr. 
Hiram continued. Anacreon, Ode XX, translated by “D. D.” 














1735 
January 


262. Answer by Joshua Ward to “Misoquackus” with affidavits to 
refute statements of the latter. Letter by “Isaac Bickerstaff,” 





330 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


satirising Ward’s methods of advertising. Epigram, in Latin and 
English, on Ward, by “U. C.” 

263. Letter by “Democritus” on several well-known quacks of the 
last generation. Cibber’s New Year’s Ode, with annotation by 
Bavius. Letter by ‘““Hannah Housewife,” thanking the Journal 
for its exposure of Tindall’s Rapin. 

264. A rebuttal of Ward’s letter, with counter-affidavits. —— A 
letter by “Philanthropos,” citing two cases in Ward’s favor. Ana- 
creon, Ode XXI, translated by “ D. D.” 

265. Long personal attack on Matthew Tindall, with anecdotes to 
illustrate his manners and morals. Epigram in Latin and Eng- 
lish on an expected royal infant, by “U. C.” 

266. Attack on Bentley’s Horace, by “Torrentius.” Attack on 
Ward by “Iatrophilus.” Verses in Latin and English by “U. C.” on 
the same point as those in 265. Letter by “Tom Tarr” urging 
the Journal to further attack on Popery and quackery. Lines by 
“Dactyl” on various attitudes toward King Charles’ Day. 











February 


267. Letter by ‘“Eugenius Philalethes,’ detailing a case history 
against Ward. Proposal for a lottery to get husbands for old maids, 
by “Democritus.” Mr. Hiram continued. Verses by Savage to Wal- 
ter Harte. Examination of some of Ward’s evidence, and a 
case-history against him. Epigram by ‘“‘Dactyl” on a King Charles’ 
Day anecdote of the Calves Head Club. 

268. The character of the city flirt, by “Z. S.” A horse far- 
rier’s bill for attendance on a sick child. A long riddle in verse. 


269. Satire on “entertainments,’ by “Arlequin Chef d’oeuvre.” 
Essay on the endless talker. Lines: “A Dream. Inscribed to 
Mira.” Lines “To the author of the Essays on Man,” by “T. N.” 


270. Essay by “Democritus” on the evils of allowing young ladies 
to associate with servants. Letter from an old maid (““Meager Long- 
chin’) who wishes to enter the lottery proposed in 267. Letter at- 
tacking the scandalous Fleet parsons, by “Virtuous.” Anacreon, Ode 
XXII, translated by “D. D.” Notice of a suit by Ward against 
the Journal. Epigram on the celebration of January 30. 














March 


271. Letter by “Misokuon” demanding the extermination of dogs, 
because of danger of rabies. Mr. Hiram continued, with an answer 
to Hiram from the Daily Journal. Lines: “To Miss Waller.” —— 
“An epigram on the Calves Head Club” (cf. 267 and 270). 


272. Letter deploring the state of the stage and attacking a visit- 


APPENDIX 331 


ing French company, by “True Briton,’ with a note by Bavius. At- 
tack by “Orthodoxus” on a proposed translation of Josephus by 
Whiston, with a note by Bavius. Stanzas on rival French and Eng- 
lish Harlequins. Letter in support of Hippisley and his daugh- 
ter, about to make her debut. Note denying a statement by ‘‘Miso- 
kuon” in 271. Epigram in Latin and English on Walpole. 





273. Letter attacking Middleton’s “Dissertation” on printing. The 
bill of a lover’s auction. Letter on a bill to regulate printing, especi- 
ally against piracy and “new” editions, by “Appendix.” Letter 
by “Philanthropos” in support of the actor Chapman’s benefit. Epi- 
gram on Swiit’s leaving his estate to lunatics. 





274. Letter on the value of the periodical essay in improving 
manners and taste, by “Philaretes.” Letter by “Modulus” on legal 
regulation of the theatre. Request by “T. G.” for information 
about a proposed Geographical Dictionary. 





April 


275. An attack on free-thinkers, with citations from an examina- 
tion of a “Discourse of Free-thinking” of about 1715. Letter 
by “Lynceus Lilliput” on reducing spectacles, to show man his place 
in the world. Epigram by Maevius, with allusion to the Tindall 
scandal. 





276. Criticism by “A. A.” of proposals for a new Turkish history. 
The comment on the “Discourse of Free-thinking” continued. A 
letter in favor of dogs by “Philaretes,’ enclosing “Verses sent to a 
lady with a Lap Dog.” 

277. Another letter by “Lynceus Lilliput” on reducing spectacles. 
Letter on regulation of the theatre. Letter on the foulness of Lon- 
don streets. Anacreon, Ode X XIII, translated by “D. D.” Lines 
by “Maevius Cornucopia” on famous cuckolds, submitted by “A. Z.” 


278. On the regulation of quacks. Anacreon, Ode XXIV, trans- 
lated by “D. D.” Epigram by Maevius, on Ward. 











May 


279. On the regulation of quacks, continued, by “Machaon.” An 
attack on two new works of anatomy. On the Discourse of Free- 
thinking, continued. Burlesque petition of players against a bill 
to prohibit acting in places where liquor is sold. Epigram by “Co- 
nundrum” on drams and drama. 

280. Reprint of a proposal of 1666 to rebuild certain London 
streets. Stanzas on Handel. Anacreon, Ode XXV, translated by 
AD iD 








332 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


281. On the solemnity of oaths. A quotation from Trapp on 
“Poetic Style,” with a Latin paraphrase of Psalm 137. On Scotch 
schoolmasters by “G. G.” On the Discourse of Free-thinking con- 
tinued. A reply to “G. G.” above. 


282. On pretty fellows, by ‘‘Powder-Paste Plaister-crown.” An 
ode by a young lady, ‘““The Emulation,” contributed by “A. B.” (on 
the trivial education of women). Epigram on Ward’s suit 
against the Journal, by “Dactyl.” 








283. The attack on Ward resumed; some of his claims examined, 
by “C. J.” “A Song by a Young Lady.” Note on “C. J.’s” letter. 
Anacreon, Ode XX VI, translated by “D. D.” 





June 


284. A review of the quarrel with Ward, by Bavius. Remarks on 
A Discourse of Free-thinking continued. Lines: “Farinelli.’” —— 
Epigram: satire on Ward’s suit, by “Conundrum.” 


285. “A short dissertation upon Puffs.” A long list of satirical 
definitions. Lines: “From Martial.” Lines: “On Farinelli.” 


286. On puffs, continued, by “Puffemoffius.” “Some Odd Thoughts 
concerning Matrimony.” On the treatment of physicians in China. 
One of the stanzas on Farinelli in 285, as submitted and as 
revised for publication. Discussion of a point of Latin, by “B. L.” 
“A Song.” 

287. “Fanny: or Poetry and Paste. Inscribed to Mr. Pope.” [On 
Lord Hervey. ] Stanzas by B—n defending Harte against 
Ralph, as the “scribler of an Epistle to the Author of an Essay upon 
Reason.” Satirical note on other newspapers. 











July 


288. On free-thinking continued. A suggestion to settle war by 
giving armies Ward’s pills, by “Democritus.” Stanzas: “Crura Asci- 
titia Anglicé Stilts.” Verses by Maevius on the death of the 
Bee. Notice of the death of several other papers. 

289. Proposal for rebuilding Grub Street, by “Palladio Grubeano,” 
satire on Cibber, Duck, Budgell, Henley, Ralph, etc. Ode, “Iris,” 
by “Mr. R—l—s,” with sarcastic note. 

290. Abridgement of a pamphlet (1719) on the increase of Lon- 
don. Anacreon, Ode XXVII, translated by “D. D.” Lines: 
“The Bite,” apropos of Curll and Pope’s Letters. 

291. Attack on a poem “The Vision” published in the Bee, and 
said to equal Addison’s in the Spectator, and also on another, “Stan- 
islaus,” by “Orthodoxus.” Lines: “To Mr. T—,” by “Amelia.” 














APPENDIX 333 


A receipt for composing a love letter. Notice in favor of a Mr. 
Dunne, whose reputation had been hurt by false arrest. Stanzas: 
“To the Author of Universal Beauty, a Poem.” 


292. On familiarity with ancient critics, with much allusion to 
Pope’s “Essay on Criticism.” Epigram on Curll. 





August 


293. Satire on medical writing, directed against the oculist Taylor, 
by “J. T.” Letter by “S” praising Pope, but emending a line in the 
prologue to “Cato.” A simile of Addison paraphrased in Latin, by 
“J. B.” An epitaph by “T. W.” An epilogue by Carey for The 
Honest YVorkshireman. Two epigrams on Curll. An epigram by 
eats eleese 


294. On infidelity and providence. Latin verses to William Thomp- 
son, by Maevius. Tindall’s ‘“Philosopher’s Prayer,” versified. 


295. On happiness, by “R. T.” Letter in defense of the Irish, 
occasioned by the epigram on Thompson in 294, by “Impartial Love- 
‘Abra Ghee’ An answer by Maevius to the preceding. Lines: “On 
a Pipe of Tobacco” by “G. S.” 


296. On Tindall and his prayer, an attack on the Bee. On one of 
the Latin poems on Tindall in the Bee, with notes by “Orthodoxus.” 
Lines: “Youths that died to be by poets sung,” satire on Budg- 
ell’s prize poems on Tindall. 














September 


297. On vanity and flattery, by “R. T.” Epigram by “P. W.”” —— 
The epitaph of Mrs. Cecil Talbot. Stanzas on anxiety, by “A. B. C.” 

298. On Tindall’s “Philosopher’s Prayer,” continued. —— “A 
Fragment of Anacreon,”’ by “Grubaeus Scriblerus.” 

299. “An Edict or Decree of the Goddess of Dullness’”—special 
allusion to Cibber and Budgell. Epigram on seeing a miser at 
Vauxhall. 

300. An attack on deists, with lines ‘““On the Deists’ Scheme of 
Tori ovecis” janie IR aD A reply to a defense of ‘““The Philosopher’s 
Prayer” in the Post-Boy, by Bavius. Epigram on the same subject, 
by Maevius. 








October 


301. On the abuses of installment publication by “Incog,” with note 
by Bavius. Moral essay: a vision of the temples of two goddesses, 
Pleasure and Health. Verses by “W. B.” to a young lady in the 
country. —— An imitation of Boethius, by “Anicius Severinus 
Boethius.” 


334 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


302. Another Latin prize poem on Tindall, with comments by 
Bavius. “The Philosopher’s Prayer,” reprinted exactly, and the 
Journal's rimed version. Letter by “Anti-philos Precat” satirizing 
Budgell and the “Prayer.” 

303. On managing a husband, by “Martha Love-Rule,”’ with a 
passage from Hudibras. The “Prayer” reprinted again, with 
notes by Bavius. 

304. The third-prize poem on Tindall, with notes by Bavius. 
Letter “To the late authors of the Bee,” on the “Prayer.” Lines by 
Maevius: “A Dialogue between Prompterus and Pufferus Secundus” 
[the Prompter and the Bee]. 

305. Letter by “F. T.” on the persecution of a married man by 
his mistress. The letter to the Bee, continued by Bavius. “Song.” 
“An Ode on his Majesty’s Birthday,” not by the laureate. 














November 


306. Cibber’s Ode, with notes by Bavius. A puff of the Bee 
in the Daily Journal, with comments, and an epigram on the same 
point by Bavius. 

307. On the “Philosopher’s Prayer” (to be cont.). Song: “The 
Adieu to the Spring Gardens.” A puff of the Prompter “para- 
phrastically illustrated,” and verses on the same subject by Maevius, 
with a note on the Bee. 

308. On the “Philosopher’s Prayer” continued. Stanzas on “the 
happy mean’’—allusions to Pope and Cibber. A Latin epigram 
from the Prompter attacking Bavius, with attacks on its false Latin 
by Bavius. 

309, A reply by “A. N.” to “Martha Love-Rule” in 303. —— A 
remedy for bed-bugs, by “X.” A political epigram by “A. B.” 











December 


310. On wig-boxes, by ‘““Oxoniensis,” general satire. Attack on the 
oculist, Dr. Taylor, by ‘Peter Queer.” Letter by ‘“Philo- 
Grubeus” on Henley and the “Prayer.” Epigram by “Philo-Martial” 
on the Bee and the Prompter, Budgell and Hill. Note by Bavius on 
the first essay. 

311. Two more Latin poems on Tindall, with comment and reply 
by Bavius to attacks in the Prompter. Letter complaining about 
the space given up to the quarrel with the Bee, by “Jack Nab.” A 
defense of Taylor by “Tim Justice” with a note by “J. H.” [Hug- 
gonson]. Epigram on biblical commentators. 

312. Attack on Henley for his defense of the “Prayer,” by 
“Philo-Grubaeus.” Attack on foreign actors and singers by “Staunch 








APPENDIX 335 


Old Briton.” An ode on “Tobacco” by “Gabriel John,” burlesque of 
Cibber. Further reply by Bavius to hostile epigrams in the 
Prombpter. 

313. “A Rhapsody in Praise of Garrets,”’ by “Oxoniensis.” Two 
more prize poems on Tindall, with notes by Bavius, also a Latin 
epigram on the same subject with comment by Bavius. A letter from 
“H. R.,” deriding the Tindall contest, and enclosing satirical lines. 
Puff by “W. L.” of new Latin school texts by “Mr. Stirling.” 
Remarks on the Prompter’s epigrams, continued, by Bavius. A note 
to contributors. 








1736 
January 


314. On the difficulties of writing essays, with a list of useless 
subjects. “To a gentleman on his refusing a visit from some young 
HACTESs Dyan DC Ode to the Mayor, by Maevius. On the 
Prompter’s Latin, continued, by Bavius. A verse advertisement of a 
lost dog. Note of Bavius’ resignation. 

315. An attack on Curll’s edition of Pope’s Letters, by “D. L.” 
Attack on a French dancer, by “Cato.” Cibber’s New Year’s Ode, 
with notes. Satirical letter on the quality of theatrical entertainments 
and public taste. Comment by Bavius on false Latin, and abuse 
of him, in the Prompter. 

316. Taylor’s preface to his treatise on the eye, with a letter by 
“Peter Queer” attacking Taylor. “An excellent new Ballad,” by 
“Simon.” Bavius’ speech of resignation. Contemptuous letter 
from “D. D.” on Curll. Epigram on the Prompter and Daily Journal 
by “Dactyl.” 

317. Satire on the newspapers, by “Histrio-Aspis.” Reply by J. 
Taylor to “Peter Queer.” “An Epitaph on Jacob Tonson.” 
Bavius’ reply to the attacks of the Prompter. An epigram on the 
Prompter’s false Latin, by ‘“Philosophus.” 

318. “A Preface upon Prefaces,” by “Oxoniensis.” Verses to the 
memory of Mrs. Eliz. Frankland. —— Bavius in quarrel with the 
Prompter, continued. 














February 


319. Essay upon Conversation, by “J. T.” Political epigram, by 
“Cluvienus.” Bavius on the quarrel with the Prompter, con- 
tinued. 

320. A list of errors in the translation of Rapin, by “Philalethes.” 
Letter to the Prompter, by “Candidus” (submitted by Bavius) on 
various old quarrels of the Journal. Further attack on the 
“Prayer” and the Prompter’s defense of it, by Bavius. 








336 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


321. On the pronunciation of Cleomenes, etc., by “Philellen.” A 
passage of Horace, paraphrased by “Palaeophilus.” Explanation by 
“Outis Junior” of the meaning of “Outis,” with an editorial note. 
“To Mrs. Cibber, An Ode,” by “Theatricus.” The quarrel with 
the Prompter, continued by Bavius. 

322. On the decay of learning, and pedantry. On the quarrel 
over two rival plays, Miller’s Man of Taste and Popple’s Double 
Deceit, by “Neither-side.” 








March 


323. On marrying helpless insane patients to members of the 
family of the doctor who has charge of them, by “Farewell.” On the 
Popple-Miller quarrel, by ‘“Neither-side.” Lines by “Endymion,” 
“An Astronomical Paradox.” Bavius’ quarrel with the Promp- 
ter, continued. Defence of The Man of Taste against the Prompter. 

324. Account by “Puff” of attempts to write a poem, with a prose 
poem on “Merlin.” “The Physical Cause of a Lunar Eclipse,” by 
“Philo-Mathematicus.”” Reasons against the repeal of laws on witch- 
Cratt, Dyas ae baw Bavius vs. the Prompter, continued. Note by 
J. H. [Huggonson] on the Popple-Miller quarrel. Humorous para- 
phrase of Integer vitae. 


325. On errors in Rapin, by ‘“Philalethes.” A dissenting “Call 
renewed from the City to the Country” for the repeal of the Test 
Act. Request by “Common Sense” that the Journal drop the quar- 
rels over the “Prayer” and The Double Deceit, with editorial reply. 
Note by Huggonson to Popple. Letter by “A. B.” praising new 
prints by Rysbrack. An advertisement by Hippisley of his benefit. 

326. Attack on amateur actors on the public stage (apropos of 
an experiment by Aaron Hill), submitted by “Meanwell.” Note by 
“J. H.” on Popple’s conduct and manners. Bavius vs. Prompter, 
continued. A receipt to make “neat Port,” to supply the place of gin, 
by? Bee 














April 

327. Proposals to tax theatre tickets and use the income to free 
Christian slaves. “An epistle from a young gentleman at Bath.” 
Note by J. H. on the manners of Popple and of C. H. (Charles 
Hill). Letter by J. English on the acting of Charles Hill in Zara. An 
epigram on Cibber, in answer to one in the Daily Journal. 

328. Proposals, etc., continued from 327. On the appropriation of 
church property by the state, by “T. B.” Notice of the theft by 
the Post Boy of verses from the Journal. Lines by “Common Sense” 
on seeing Pope at Pasquin. 

329. Attack by “B. T.” on Bentley’s emendation of the classics. 
Letter on leaving estates to charity. Satirical letter by “Pow- 











APPENDIX 337 


der-Paste Plaister-Crown,” enclosing a model love letter. Note that 
Pope had not attended Pasquin. “To the East Wind,” by “B. B.” 


330. Pasquin examined. On Quaker’s tithes, by “T. B.” “To Are- 
thusa,” by “Endymion.” —— Reprint of a history of plots against 
royalty, of 1571. 


331. Reply to attacks on Rapin. Advertisement by the actor Stop- 
pelaer of his benefit. Notice of successful operations on the eye by 
Dr. Taylor. Mock advertisement of an auction of silly poems. 
Note to contributors. 





May 


332. Pasquin examined (continued from 330), by “Marforio.” 
Latin and English lines to the Princess Augusta, by “A. Q.” and 
een.” Remarks on Rapin concluded, by “Caledon” (“A Vindi- 
cation of the Antiquity of the Scottish Nation’). 


333. On Greek accent, by “Prosodiophilus.” On confinement of 
the sane in mad houses to get money from them, by “‘Phileleutherus.” 
Lines on “The Astronomical Paradox” by “Endymion” (cf. 323). 
The Popple-Miller quarrel reviewed. 

334. On errors in Rapin, by “Philalethes.” On authorized editions 
of the Bible, by “A. B.”. Lines: “An Epistle to Mr. Pope” and “A 


Rhapsody.”” —— The Popple-Miller quarrel continued. A burlesque 
petition from wives of shoemakers, apropos of “cobbling”’ plays. 








335. “Hibernus” on false patriotism, apropos of Rapin and Scotch 
antiquity. On burlesque pedantic quarrels among Oxford students, 
by “Flat-Cap-Copper-Nose.” Lines by “T. C.” on a new bust of 
Dryden. The Popple quarrel continued. A Ballad on Quakers’ 
tithes. 





June 


336. “Hibernus” continued from 335. Letter from “Gratus” on the 
successful use of a remedy published in 309. The Popple quar- 
rel continued. Stanzas “On Marriage.” 


337. A children’s petition to Parliament (1669) for relief from 
severity of school discipline, abridged. Verses: “To the Prince,” 
submitted by “Puff.” On the Fleet parsons, by “T. S.” 

338. “The Mad Doctor, A New Ballad,” in Latin and English, 
by “S. B.” Remarks by “J. H.”” [Huggonson] on the ballad on Quak- 
ers’ tithes in 335. On the attractions of Vauxhall, by “Freedom.” 

339. The children’s petition, continued. An account of some 


of Ward’s “cures.” Lines, ‘Seven Wonderful Cures.” Note from 
“Freedom” promising another contribution. 














338 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


July 

340. “Philalethes” on Rapin. A letter on Vauxhall, by “Freedom.” 
Attack on charges of admission at the theatres, by ‘““Haberdasherus.” 
An attack on Fog’s and the Daily Post, which had attacked 
two clergymen. 

341. On legal and religious oaths. Answer by Joseph Clutton, 
apothecary, to a defence of Ward by his brother, William Ward. 

342. On matrimony, by “Eusebius,” illustrated by a Turkish tale. 
Clutton’s answer to Ward, reprinted complete, including the 
section in 341. 

343. On Scotch antiquities, continued, by a new correspondent, 
taking the side of “Caledonius” against “Hibernus.” Account of the 
successes of the oculist Taylor. Notice of a suit for damages against 
Taylor, won by the plaintiff. A Ward case history (numbered 
LI), by “M-Q.” Stanzas on the marriage of the Prince of Wales. 
Notice to correspondents. 

344. On Scotch antiquities, concluded, by “John of Lochaber,” 
(this discussion having grown out of criticisms of Rapin). —— 
Joseph Clutton to John Smith, on subject of Ward. Notice to cor- 
respondents. 














August 

345. Criticism by “Thomas Didymus” of Whiston’s Primitive 
Eucharist Reviv'd. On Vauxhall manners, by “Anticonstabularius.” 
Stanzas on Senesino. A case from Clutton’s pamphlet against 
Ward. A Ward case (LII). 

346. On Rapin and Scotch antiquities (to be cont.). Attack on 
Dr. Taylor by “Fair-play.” A note on Horace, by “T. W.” 
Ward case (LIII). Reply by Clutton to an attack in the Advertiser. 
Note to correspondents. 

347. Oration on Dullness by “Sir John Thickskull.” 
by Clutton to a second letter by William Ward (to be concl.). 

348. The discussion of Scotch antiquities continued. Epistle to 
Chesterfield by Carey, (reprinted, being out of print; contains praise 
of Pope). —— Clutton’s letter in 347 concluded. 








Reply 





September 

349. On Scotch antiquities, continued from 348. On cheating and 
gambling, by “Philo-Innocentiae.” Ward case (LV), contrib- 
uted by “A. J.” 

350. On the death of the Prompter, with a review of the quarrel 
with it. Ward case LVI. A notice by Thomas Barber attacking 
Mrs. Mapp, bonesetter. Lines on Semiramis, by the author of 
“Friendship in Death.” 








APPENDIX S68) 


351. Review of Clutton’s campaign against Ward, with a list of 
burlesque case-histories, ridiculing Ward’s claims (to be cont.). 
“Epigram Extempore” and “Verses on Second Thoughts,” on the 
“E—1 of B[urlingto]n, by [Hervey].” On Scotch antiquities, 
concluded, by “Philalethes.” 


352. Satirical letter on obscenity in the theatre. Ward case LVII, 
by M. Rymes. A note to distillers, by “Ephemeristes.” Letter to 
Clutton concerning one of his case histories. Two Odes in imitation 
of Horace. Lines “Of the Praise of Tobacco,” (parody of 
Aaron Hill). Threatening letter to Huggonson by “G. F.,” apropos 
of attacks on Ward, with reply by Huggonson. Two epigrams on 
Hervey, addressed to Burlington. 








353. Satirical letter on curing madmen by matrimony, an attack 
on the abuse of the insane, by “Arcularius Buckthorne.” Answer to 
“Ephemeristes” in 352, by “Peter Open-law.’”’ Horace I, 5, para- 
phrased, by “A Trueblue, Esq.” A note and couplet in reply to 
verses on Hervey in 352. A verse fable on Hervey. 





October 


354. “Hibernus” on Scotch antiquities. Verses on punch, by “L. 
Love-punch.” Ward case LVIII, by “Didymus.” Attack by 
“A. B. C.” on a proposed History of China, to be published by 
Watts, in opposition to one by Cave. Note on the quarrel with the 
Prompter. 


355. Attack by “A. B.” on Ward’s pretensions. On an act con- 
cerning the relations between attorney and client, by “B. A.” 
Stanzas, ““Punch’s Dying Speech.” “Philo-Charity,” proposing 
a benefit for victims of an accident at the Covent Garden Theatre. 
An epigram, “To — Esq., F. R. S.” 

356. John Colson, describing the plagiarism of a book of his by a 
Dr. Philip Nichols. Stanzas by “X. X.”: “The Looking Glass.” 
Letter by “A. B.” on the acting of a play at the request of Mrs. 
Mapp. Ward case LX. 

357. Reply by “C. D.” to the letter on Mrs. Mapp in 356. On a 
mill to grind out syllogisms, by “Sawney the Scot.” Stanzas: “A 
Dream,” by “M. G.” A note on Latin scansion, by “Phil- 
TIambus.” Ward case LXI. 














November 


358. Cibber’s Birthday Ode, with notes. Ward case LXII. 
Lines on a new book, The Antiquities of Surrey. Notice of receipt 
of orders to stop advertisements of two punch-houses. 


359. “A. B.” in reply to “C. D.” in 357, on Mrs. Mapp. Stanzas 





340 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


by “A. B.” on a distiller’s having to give up his trade and go into 
wine. Detailed account of the history of a Ward case already 
published. 


360. Letter congratulating the Journal for repressing a poem on 
punch (the cause of punch advertisements being cancelled), and 
citing passages from Cheyne on the evils of punch drinking. An 
extract from Fuller’s Pharmacope@ia, opposed to quotations from 
Cheyne. 

361. Letter praising Mrs. Cibber and comparing her with her 
rival, Mrs. Clive, by “Reader of Speculations.” The evils of liber- 
tinism, by “J. D.” A passage of Juvenal, translated by “A. Q.’”? —— 
Epigram on Mapp, Taylor, and Ward. 








December 


362. “Hibernus” on antiquities. Letter by “R. S.” congratu- 
lating the Journal for its attacks on quacks, with editorial note. 


363. Letter from Theophilus Cibber, defending his wife against 
the charge of over-ambition. Attack on Watts’ History of China, by 
lea Defence of Taylor by “S. S.,” with editorial note. 
Note to contributors. 


364. ‘““Pharmacopola Rusticus” on the fad for specifics. Passages 
from the new History of China. “Mediator” on the Cibber-Clive 
quarrel. Stanzas: “Advice to Mrs. Clive,” by “Humphrey Oddwit.” 

365. Attack by “P. L.” on Watts’ China continued. On the 
rapacity of men-midwives, by “Philopauperis.” Letter from 
John Watts defending his China, and attacking Cave’s methods of 
advertising. 

366. “Haberdasherus,” citing examples of actors who had sur- 
rendered favorite parts for the good of the theatre. Horace, IV, 5, 
imitated. Examination of a new life by Curll of the Rev. Mr. 
George Kelly. Lines on a quarrel between the Craftsman and the 
Gazetteer. 

















1737 
January 


367. “P. L.” on Watts’ China, continued. “Haberdasherus,” re- 
plying to an attack in the Daily Journal on his letter in 366. 
On oaths, by “A. Z.”’ Punning distich in Latin, by “Simon Lovewit.” 

368. Reply by “Amicus” to attack in the Daily Journal on Giffard, 
actor-manager, apropos of the Cibber-Clive quarrel. The New Year’s 
Ode, with notes. On false Latin in the dedication of a new 
edition of Eutropius. Editorial support of “Haberdasherus,’ in 
quarrel with the Daily Journal. Burial statistics from Edinburgh. 








APPENDIX 341 


369. Notice of the plagiarizing by “G. Smith” of an astronomical 
essay by Thomas Wright. On coffee house conversations, by “P. 
M.” On a society of Puffers, with hits at Henley, Ward, etc., by 
“Pufferus.” Further reply by ‘““Haberdasherus” in quarrel with 
the “Occasional Prompter” in the Daily Journal, with editorial note. 
Satirical epigram on Cibber, by “E. S.” 

370. On the evils of spirit-drinking, by “A. B.” Note apropos 
of the new edition of Eutropius. The quarrel with the Daily Journal 
continued. 








February 


371. In defense of Punch, replying to the Journal, 360. In defense 
of certain oaths, by “Philorchus.” “Philo-Patriae,” attacking treat- 
ment of condemned prisoners in Newgate. Reply by George 
Smith to attack in 369. 

372. Attack by “Villiomarus” on the methods of Stirling’s school 
edition of Persius. A note on tax legislation under Charles II, by 
©U. B.” Ballad: “A Tale of a Tub.” Quarrel with the Daily 
Journal continued. Stanzas: “On Colley Cibber’s printed Case.” 

373. “A Modern Polite Conversation,” by “J. B.” Answer by 
Thomas Wright to George Smith. The quarrel with the Daily Jour- 
nal continued. 

374. On Latin emendations, by “A. Z.” The “Conversation” in 
373 reprinted. Attack on the Journal for its malice, by “Hon- 
estus,” with editorial reply. Latin lines on the death of D. Talbot, by 
“Vice Cotis.” Epigram: “A Dialogue at Court.” Latin distich. 














March 


375. “Empirico-Mastix,”’ in censure of Stirling. Attack by “Le- 
gion” on the publishers of Rapin. Attack on harlequinades, by 
“Shakespeare, Jonson, etc.” On the Wright-Smith quarrel, by ‘““Philo- 
Filch.” An epilogue to King John, as amended by Cibber. The 
quarrel with the Daily Journal continued. 


376. Defence of “Lun” (Rich) from attack in the Daily Journal, 
by “A. B.” Horace, I, 24, imitated by “N. Y.” Lines: “To Mr. 
Pope.” On Henley’s defence of the Daily Journal. Reply by 
“Phil Aret.” to “Phil Filch,” in 375. “Ode on Miss A Horan 
verses to the same person. 

377. On Oldmixon’s Lives of the English Bishops, by “A. B.” 
Attack on Dr. Taylor. Story of a young man who thought he was 
marrying money. On theatre manners, by “Hat Off.” Reply by 
Smith to Wright. Further remarks on the Hyp Doctor’s defence of 
the Daily Journal. 














342 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


378. Attack on Stirling, by “Empirico-Mastix.” Reply to “Phil 
Aret.” by “Phil Filch.” Reply by “Haberdasherus” to the defence 
of Rich in 376. Stanzas on Pope’s imitation of Horace, IV, 1, by 
“Philo Moravius.” The reply to the Hyp Doctor continued. 
Lines: “A Farewell to Friendship,” by “Philo-Grubeus.” Notice that 
“Fatal Curiosity,” a new play, is in reality an old one. 


379. On diet, especially the evil effect of tea, by “South Briton.” 
On annuities, by “The Afflicted Widow.” On the Wright-Smith 
quarrel, by “Tom Tell-troth.” 








April 


380. Letter in praise of the clergy, by “Eusebius Old-fashion.” On 
a bill against rogues and vagabonds. Psalm 38, in heroic 
couplets. 


381. “Part of the Preface to the Memoirs of the Society of Grub- 
street, which will be published next week.” “Mercator Lon- 
dinensis” on the South Sea Annuities. Latin lines on Philip Hard- 
wick, by “U. C.” 


382. On marriage and love, by “Philo-Math.” Continuation of dis- 
cussion of a pending bill (see 380) by “E. O.” Horace III, 13, para- 
phrased. A note on deciphering manuscripts. On the death of 
the Daily Journal. 


383. Attack on the “Mad Doctor,” who undertook to cure all in- 
sanity, by “Jack the Giant-Killer.” A passage from Claudian, trans- 
lated by “A. Q.” On a flagrant puff of Ward’s cures. 














May 


384. A suggestion by “Scenicus” to improve pantomime, sug- 
gested by a passage from Apuleius, here reprinted. Violent reply to 
“Jack the Giant-Killer,” by “The Advertiser,’ with editorial note. 
Two epitaphs on Gay, one of them Pope’s. A puff of Ward, 
with comment. 





385. On interest on annuities, by “J. T.” A cure for mad dog bite 
by “R. M.” and “On the Bite of a Mad Dog,” by “P. L.” On incon- 
sistencies in Whiston’s proposed Josephus, by “A. Z.”” —— A satir- 
ical dialogue on the story of Jack the Giant-Killer. 

386. On Quaker’s tithes, by “E. O.” On annuities, by “A. A.” On 
pastorals, by “R. S.” Notes to contributors. 

387. A discourse on the best method of teaching Latin, by James 
Pearce, submitted by “E. M.” Reply by “The Letter Writer” (Jack 
the Giant Killer) to “The Advertiser” in 384. On the quarrel 
with the “Mad Doctor,” (The Advertiser). 








APPENDIX 343 


June 


388. Reply by “B. J.” to “E. O.” on Quakers in 386. On Pearce’s 
Latin method, by “M. E.” Lines: “Calista to Sempronia“ (ap- 
parently apropos of the Abergavenny scandal of 1730; Lady Aber- 
gavenny was “Calista”). 





389. On bad manners and morals of servants by “E. O.” On a puff 
of a new book on “Dialling,” by “Sciographicus.” Arguments used 
by Quakers against tithes. A defence of his Latin method, by 
James Pearce. Stanzas on the previous Sunday, submitted by “J. L.” 


390. “E. O.” on Quaker’s tithes. 
on manuscripts in 382. 





Continuation of discourse 





391. A whimsical letter by “And per se And” in comment on a 
late attempted suicide, on the latest quarrels of the Journal, and 
enclosing a “Song.” An obituary of “the Lady Geneva” [gin]—satire 
on the excise. An obscure letter from “Ladies” of various Lon- 
don parishes to their friends at New Tunbridge Wells. 





392. Verse epistle from a naval officer at Jamaica, submitted by 
“C. F.” The letter of “And per se And” in 391, continued by “Et 
Caetera.” A ballad by a mantua maker, submitted by “A. B.” 





July 


393. Attack on Quakers and Papists, by “A. Z.” Arbuthnot’s epi- 
taph on Col. Chartres, done into Latin by a boy of Charleston, S. C. 
On surveying, by “A. B.” Extempore verses by Stephen Duck, 
“Agar’s Wish,” submitted by “Y. Z.” Notes to contributors. 


394. Reply to “A. B.” in 393 by “C. D.” The whim of “And per 
se And” in 391, continued by “Cipher o.” On puffs of various sur- 
geons, by “Anti-pufferus.”” A humorous letter of proposal signed 
“A Cock,” submitted by “Peregrine Viator.” —— A whimsical 
letter on “Dialling,” by “Gnomonicus.” 





395. On deciphering manuscripts. Reply to “A. Z.” in 393, by 
“C. V.” On methods of instruction in Latin, by “E. English.” A 
song in “The Orphan,” translated into Latin. Reply to “Scio- 
graphicus” in 389, by “John Eager.” Notes to contributors. 





396. On the drug, manna, by “P. L.” A passage from Pastor 
Fido translated. A note on the reply to “Sciographicus,” by 
“Sam Sharp.” Note on false Latin in the Gazetteer. Notes to con- 
tributors. 





August 


397. On the current lottery, by “N. P.” “The Attorney’s Clerk, 
An Eclogue.” Letter by “J. T.” on the phrase “Grape Street, 
otherwise Grub Street.” Reply to “Sam Sharp,” by “John Eager.” 





344 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


398. On the liberties of Gentlemen Commoners at Oxford, by 
“Occidit.” On Quaker’s tithes, by “E. O.” —— Illiterate footman’s 
letter, by “B. G.” Lines on an interview with a young lady, and 
upon saluting a young lady. 

399. Lines, submitted by “E. G.,” with editorial comment. A 
scheme for disposing of a list of old maids in the Lottery, by “The 
Proprietors.” A Latin epigram, submitted by “Eumenides.” Pastoral 
stanzas. A reply to “J. T.” in 397 by “W. P.” 

400. On alterations in the prayer book, by “J. F.” (this letter a 
year old). Verses in Latin and English by “U. C.” on controversies 
between Catholics and Distenters. A ballad of the time of Charles I, 
“London’s Ordinary.” “Verses wrote at Crambo” (i.e. the 
rimes given and the lines filled in). 








September 


401. Letter from “Patience Puzzle-head” on interpretations of the 
phrase “figure cypher.” Attack by “R. T.” on “Eumenes,” who 
had contributed Latin epigrams in translation to the papers. An Ode 
by a “Sea Chaplain.” Epigram on Ward and Henley, by 
fGS Si 

402. On Marriage. Ode on the text: “I believe in one God.”” —— 
“A Panegyric on a Louse, in the Style of Milton.” 


403. The biography of an upstart, by “I Knowman.” “Janus. An 
Ode,” on the birth of the Princess Augusta. “The Comet. A New 
Song,” and an epigram on the death of the Lord Chancellor, both 
submitted by “Eusebius Redivivus.” —— Epitaph on a fawn named 
Fanny, with editorial note. 

404. Reply to the article on Gentleman Commoners in 398, by 
“T.” On the lottery, by “D. M.” On methods of teaching Latin, by 
SSE ave Conclusion to a ballad in 316, by “Simonides.” 

405. “Remarks on the Bridge Lottery,” by “M.” Reply to “E. M.” 
in 404, by “M. E.” Letter by “J. B.,” author of the epitaph in 403, 
enclosing stanzas “To Miss H—.” —— Letter by “A Bankrupt” 
against publicity given bankrupts. Lines on the piracy of the 
magazines. 








October 


406. Attack on Dr. Morgan’s Moral Philosopher [free-thinking], 
by “Poplicola.” On Latin teaching methods, by “E. M.” and also a 
reply by him to “M. E.” Lines on Mr. Ba—t’s erecting alms- 
houses to atone for his vices. Note to contributors. 

407. On the excise, by “J. G.” with a note by “T. O.” Another 
whimsical love letter, contributed by “Peregrine Viator.” A song, 
“Celia in Love” by “Eusebius.”” —— Further attack on magazine 
piracies. 





APPENDIX 345 


408. Correspondence of Tillotson and William Penn, contributed 





Dsvaaielve nn liana A series of Henley’s puffs. Stanzas on “The Bur- 
lesque Orator,” contributed by “A. O. Anonymous.” Note to con- 
tributors. 


409. A dialogue of six characters, Misses Tattle, Clack, etc., by 
SBE? Argument by “D. D.” that the Penn-Tillotson letters 
did not show that Quakers were not apt to turn Catholics. 





November 


410. Continuation by “T. O.” of his note in 407 (attack on man- 
agers of the Evening Post). Cibber’s birthday ode, with notes. 
Note to contributors. 





411. On a new edition of Dale’s Pharmacologia (to be cont.) 
Stanzas: “The Insipid Triumviri’—attack on Cibber, submitted by 
AO. A list of Henley puffs. 

412. On Dale, continued. “An Answer to Caleb D’Anvers’ Court 
Ballad,’ communicated by “A. O. Anonymous.” A defence of 
“A, O. Anonymous” against attacks by Henley in the Daily Post. 

413. A long poem describing an entertainment in Yorkshire, in 
honor of the king’s birthday. Notice of a death due to Ward’s 
medicines. A list of Henley puffs. 











December 


414. On proposals for Garland’s Geographical Dictionary, by 
“LP.” “Lines to Miss H—Il,” (“written by a deceased author, and 
communicated by Mr. A. O.’) More Henley puffs. Satirical 
letter on Henley by “The Man in the Moon.” 


415. Answer by Garland to the article in 414. Continuation of the 
life of an upstart (see 403) by “Know-man.” An account “of 
some late comical transactions at the Oratory [Henley’s].” A note 
to contributors. 


416. “Occidit” on Gentleman Commoners (see 404). Illiterate let- 
ter “Wittness Rob. Browne” apropos of the account of Henley’s 
Oratory in 415. Comic lines, an invitation to a birthday. Further 
account of the Oratory. Stanzas: “Monsieur D—’s Address... 
[at] Stationers Hall, on his appearing in full Court Mourning.” 

417. Middle section of the Preface to The Memoirs of Grubstreet 
(see 381). A list of Henley puffs. Lines in Latin and English 
on having neither supper nor credit, by “A. B.” “and my chum.” 














418. The Preface to the Memoirs concluded, and signed Bavius. 
Announcement of the Literary Courier of Grub-street, and 
directions to contributors. 





346 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


Tue LITERARY COURIER OF GRUB-STREET 
1738 


January 5 


1. Remarks on the cessation of the Journal, with reasons for its 
decline, and a detailed account of the new policy of the Courier, by 
“Eph. Quibus.” An attack by John Huddleston on a Spanish gram- 
mar. A New Year’s Ode in imitation of the Laureate. Verses by 
“A. B.”, “The Lady’s Lap-dog.” 

2. Tacitus’ account of Nero’s burning Rome, in Gordon’s trans- 
lation, with discussion of causes of great fires and notes of errors 
by Gordon. “The Elbow Chair. An Ode,” by “Indolens.” Lines on 
the death of the Queen. On Henley’s selling bound files of the 
Hyp-Doctor. 

3. A section of the statement of policy in 1, reprinted with a flat- 
tering letter from “R. C.” comparing the Courier with other papers. 
Reply to “Occidit” in the Journal on Gentleman Commoners, by 
“Kin-janges Mn-yatts.” Letter to “T. B.” by “R. R.” on Gordon’s 
Tacitus. Latin lines In obitum Reginae, by “E. J.” Stanzas deriding 
Cibber as laureate, by “W. C.” 


4. On the character of a prime minister, translated from the Span- 
ish. Letter “To Mr. R. R.” on Gordon’s Tacitus. More Latin lines 
on the death of the Queen. 


February 


5.On the faults of boarding schools, by “E. M.” Reply by “Rob. 
Browne,” an associate of Henley, to an attack on lines in the Jour- 
nal, in an illiterate letter and verses. On giving tips (“veals”) to 
servants, by “A. B.” Verses, by “A. O. Anonymous” on Mrs. C— 
P—s (apparently a prostitute) turning Catholic. 

6. An attack on some of Bentley’s emendations of Horace, by 
“T. B.” A reply “To Mr. T. B.” by “R. R.” on the subject of 
Tacitus. 

7. A note by old Oxford contributors on the difficulty of getting 
the Courier at Oxford, with a note by “Eph. Quibus” on “foul play 
from booksellers.” Another letter on Gentleman Commoners, by 
“H.” Attack by “R. C.” on a note on the Aeneid, in the Craftsman. 
Stanzas: “The Lawrel, written by an Oxford Hand, 1730, To Dean 
S—t in Dublin. Communicated by A. O. Anonymous.” Note to con- 
tributors, by “Eph. Quibus.” 

8. Criticism of one of the Latin epitaphs on the Queen, by “Philo- 
calus.” On a plan to improve the linen trade, by “W. H.” Lines on 
“The Worm Powder Operator,’ communicated by “A. O. Anony- 
mous,” with a couplet from The Dunciad, and addressed to Pope. 


APPENDIX 347 


March 

9. A reply to Garland’s defence of his Geographical Dictionary 
(see the Journal), by “L. P.” 

10. Letter by “Bossamius” asking for copies of the Courier at 
Oxford. Letter on incivility to strangers in church, by “Paul Crape.” 
Attack on a new method of short-hand, by “Abathes.” Lines “To 
the Memory of Ann Rose. .. . Communicated by A. O. Anony- 
mous.” A reply by Bavius to “R. C.,” who had attacked the Journal 
and also the social manners of scholars. Epigram on a new comedy, 
The Nest of Plays. 

11. “Publicola” on proposals for a second volume of Miller’s 
Gardener's Dictionary. “R. C.,” in reply to Bavius. Letter by “P. P.” 
on a false news item in the Advertiser. 

12. An attack by “Baruglosse” on a new type of schools called 
academies, for boys of the lower classes. Reply by Bavius to “R. C.” 
Attack on Solomon Lowe’s Latin Grammar by “Alexander Doughty.” 

13. A list of terms of measure used in trade, by Solomon Lowe, 
as a specimen passage in a supplement to his Mnemonicks. A reply by 
“P. P.” (see 11) to a defense in the Advertiser. 


April 

14. An admonition of Pope for “profaneness, which has lately 
crept into his works,” by “Septuagenarius.”’ Lines “To a very old 
bachelor, intending to marry a very young maid,” by “Anonymous.” 
Notice to contributors (who will have to pay to get their letters 
published). 

15. Letter by “C. E.” on mad dog bites (see Journal 385). 

16. Poem from Congreve’s Love for Love (not so credited), with a 
Latin translation. Letter from “Nonsense” defending nonsense, 
signed “N.” Attack by “R. H.” ona letter in Weekly Common Sense, 
libelling “a young nobleman.” Editorial note on Solomon Lowe, who 
had complained in the Advertiser of his treatment in the Courier. 

17. Attack on a sculpture on a new building in the Inner Temple. 
“Prologue designed for the sixth night of Mr. Thompson’s play” 
[Agamemnon], submitted by “A. Z.” 


May 

18. A series of letters on Puffing. Lines “To a Young Lady,” by 
ok” 

19. Letter criticising the Courier for its lack of political corre- 
spondence, by “Cha. Friendly.” A dedication to a treatise, “Reasons 
against a War.” Lines “Upon Handel’s Statue being placed in 
Vauxhall. 


348 THE GRUB-STREET JOURNAL 


20. Story of the siege of a house whose occupant refused to allow 
foreclosure of a mortgage, in military terms. 

21. On a treaty between France and Spain, by “Z. Z.” A French 
political epigram translated by a young boy, submitted by his father 
“Nat. Doubt,” with editorial comment. 


June 


22. “Mr. Pope’s Journey to Oxford. In an epistle to . . . the E. 
of B—n, versified.” Lines “To the Rev. Mr. Foster” (contains praise 
of Pope). 

23. Letter by “Pusillanimus” asking for advice as to proper action, 
since he has been abused in character and person by an acquaintance. 

24. Mock attack on the Courier by “Z. Z.” with a Eulogy, in imi- 
tation of Voiture, submitted as a specimen of his own abilities. 

25. “Z. Z.’s” Eulogy continued. (This is apparently an attack on 
Walpole. ) 

26. An attack on Heidegger, who had advertised a season of 
Italian opera, and crude satire on opera itself, by “Philo F—t.” 


July 


27. A letter from a true wife to her husband, urging him to give 
up his doubtful ways and his false political ambitions, by Mary C—. 


28. Letter from “Tony Goodfellow,” a sorcerer. (Apparently 
political satire; French and Spanish allusions, and attack on Catho- 
lic influence; obscure and indirect. Concludes with lines: “The Best 
in Christendom.’ ) 

29. Attack on A Collection of French Letters translated by Mr. 
Reresby, by “Publicola.” Letter and verses by “P. A.” on British 
degeneracy, inspired by a visit to Vauxhall. Letter by “Publicola,” 
suggesting the value of published summaries of new books. 

30. “Crispinus,” defending an apothecary who had refused to use 
a certain specific remedy, and whose patient had died. Letter from 
“P. A.” submitting an improved version of the last stanza of his 
poem in 29. The 93rd Psalm paraphrased. “On seeing Mr. Handel’s 
statue in Vauxhall Gardens,” by “K.” Doggerel mixture of Latin 
and English, addressed to indigent garretteers. 


INDEX 


Addison, Joseph, 9, 65, 91 

Abergavenny, Lady, 229 n. 

Achilles, 70 

Actors, 170, 181, 186-88, 193-95, 
204-6, 214-22. 

Advertisements, 8, 16, 261 

Aeneid, 159 

Aesop, 216 

Allen, John, 252, 253 

“Alleyne, James,” 252, 253 

Aminta, 160 

Arbuthnot, Dr. John, 32, 58, 59, 
126, 257 n. 

Arne, Thomas, 195 

Ashenhurst, Dr., 94 

Astronomy, 165 

Athelwold, 201 

Author’s Farce, 173 


Bailey, Nathan, 253 

Battie, William, 14 n. 

Bavius (“B”), 3, 7-9, 11-19, 21-25, 
27, 36n., 39, 40, 45 n., 79, 92, 166, 
167; on Duck, 53; Bentley, 94, 
96, 97; Theobald, 100, 101, 102; 
periodicals, 107, 113, 115; Hen- 
ley, 120; Cibber, 191; quacks, 
263, 273; resignation, 136, 147, 
151, 152. See also Martyn, John, 
and Russel, Richard. 

Bayle’s Dictionary, 163 

Bee, 11, 12n., 40, 41, 106, 116, 
132-46 

Beer, 258 

Beggar’s Opera, 177, 195, 220 

Bellamy, D., 117 

Bellers, Fettiplace, 209 n. 

Bentley, Richard, 25, 47, 84-96, 
110 n. 

Betterton, Thomas, 170 

Betty, 210, 211 

“Bickerstaff, Isaac’, 227 

Bickerton, William (bookseller), 
14n. 

Bischien lim, 2on., 117, 163; 207 


Blackmore, Sir Richard, 29 

“Blunderbuss, Giles”, 3, 7, 39, 137 

Boarding School, 210 

Boarding School Romps, 210 

Bodens, Capt. Charles, 208 

Bolingbroke, Lord, 32 

Booksellers, 19, 162-67 

Booth, Barton (actor), 170 

Bowman, William, vicar of Dews- 
bury, 239 

Bowyer, William, 14 n. 

Bradley, R., 251 

Brissot, Peter, 260 

British Journal, 65 

Broome, William, 58 

Brotherton, James 
19n. 

Budgell, Eustace, 11, 15, 19, 38, 41, 
116, 132-46, 235 

Burbage, Richard, 170 

Butler, Samuel, 161 


(bookseller) , 


Caelia, 210, 211 

Calista to Altamont, 229 n. 

Campbell, Duncan, 81 

Carey, Henry, 151n., 211 n. 

Carruthers, Robert, 33n., 34, 40 
53n., 54n., 279 n. 

Catholics, 242 

Cave, Edward, 163-66 

Chaloner, Edward, 287 n. 

Characters of Women, 143 

Charitable Corporation, 10n., 182 

Charles I, 247 

Charles II, 247 

Chartres, Col. Francis, 228-30 

Chaucer, 160 

Cheselden, Dr. William, 257 

Cheyne, Dr. George, 257-59 

Child, Francis, 24 

Chimes of the Times, 124 

Cibber, Colley, 52, 53, 54, 63, 121, 
169, 170, 185-93, 195, 209, 210-14 

Cibber, Theophilus, 193-95, 210, 
211 n., 214-16, 217 


, 


[ 349 ] 


350 


Cibber, Mrs. Theophilus, 195, 211 

Clergy, satire on, 240-42; defense 
of, 148, 178, 226, 232, 249 

Clifton, Dr. Francis, 253 

Clive, Kitty, 170, 181, 195, 211 n. 

Clutton, Joseph, 280, 281-83, 284, 
287 

Coffey, Charles, 210n. 

Cogan, F. (bookseller), 19 n. 

Colbatch, Dr. John, 94 

Collins, Anthony, 137, 238 

Collins, Ruth, 243 

Colson, John, 168 n. 

Comedian, 178, 180 

Concanen, Matthew, 22, 34n., 47, 
52, 65-67 

Congreve, William, 65, 180 

Contrast, 207 

Cooke, Thomas, 97, 178 

Courthope, W. J., 41 

Covent Garden Theater, 211-13 

Covent Garden Tragedy, 173-76, 
179, 181, 183, 185 

Craftsman, 6, 7 n. 

Critical Review of Public Buld- 
ings, 71 

Cross, Wilbur L., 185 

Curll, Edmund, 32, 37 n., 38, 47, 50, 
60n., 65, 75, 78-83, 137, 138, 169 


Daily Courant, 7n., 70, 76, 106 

Daily Journal, 60n., 106, 114n., 
121, 150 

Daily Post, 174 

“T’Anvers, Caleb,” 114 

Davis, Rose M., 57n. 

Defoe, Daniel, 48, 81n., 294 

Deism, 136-50, 234-42 

Dennis, John, 8n., 27, 49-51, 63 

Devil of a Wife, 210 

Devil to Pay, 210 

d’Herbelot’s Dictionary, 163 

Dibble, R. F., 68 n. 

Diet, 257-59, 264 

Dormer (bookseller), 23 

Double Deceit, 153, 198-204 

Dramatic criticism, 170-88, 193-225 

“Dramaticus” (Sir William 


INDEX 


Yonge?), 14n., 173-80, 184, 209, 
210 

Drinking, 257-59 

Drury Lane, 80, 173, 174, 178, 179 

Drury Lane Theater, 175, 179, 181, 
193, 194, 201 n., 210, 211, 214-19, 
223 n., 278 

Dryden, John, 8, 180 

Ducarel, Dr. Andrew, 268 n. 

Duck, Stephen, 29, 51-57, 63, 97 

Du Halde’s History of China, 163- 
65 

Dulness and Scandal, 64 

Dunces, 47-83, 84, 96, 105 

Dunciad, 4, 5, 39, 118, 129; quar- 
rels carried on by Grub-street 
Journal, 47-74; quoted, 3, 129 

Durfey, Tom, 8n., 210, 211 n. 


Earbery, 50 

Editors, 39-46, 261 

Ellys, John, 218 

Elwin, W., & Courthope, W. J., 
34, 82n. 

“Entertainments,” 222-24 

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 37, 143 

Essay upon Satire, 30 

Essays, Letters, and Other Occa- 
sional Pieces Relating to the 
War of the Dunces, 22 

Essays Moral and Political, Seri- 
ous and Humorous, 65 

Etherege, Sir George, 210 

Excise, 6n., 112, 169, 233 


Faithful Memoirs of the Grub- 
street Society, 23 

Farinelli (opera singer), 219, 222 

Fashionable Lady, 68, 208 

Fielding, Henry, 35, 118n., 170, 
173-85, 197 n., 211 ny ailzaez: 
220, 294 

Fleet Prison, 230-32 

Fog’s Journal, 7n., 32, 56, 105, 
114n. 

Fortescue, William, 279 n. 

Fox, George, 245 

Francisque (French actor), 
222 


220, 


INDEX 


Free Briton, 7n., 106, 112, 113 

French actors, 220 

Friendly Writer, 243 

Fuller’s Pharmacopia Extempor- 
anea, 258 


“Gabriel, John,” 10 n. 

Garth, Dr. Samuel, 29 

Gay, John, 26n., 27, 32, 58, 70, 181, 
204 n. 

General Dictionary, 163 

Gentleman’s Magazine, 12, 114-16, 
117, 118, 119n., 165 

Gildon, Charles, 59 

Gilliver, Lawton (“Captain Gul- 
liver”), 16n., 19, 29, 61, 63, 78, 
102, 122, 127, 178 

Gin, 257-59 

Goole, Rev. John, 10n. 

Grafton, Duke of, 189 n. 

Grant, Roger, 264 

Griffith, R. H., 33n., 104n. 

Grubiana, 16, 22-24 

Grub-street Miscellany, 23 

Grub-street Miscellany in Prose 
and Verse, 26n. 

Grub-street Society, 3, 28, 56, 59, 
63, 78, 105, 120, 138 


Hancock, Dr. John, 264 

Harlequin Horace, 28, 98 

Harte, Walter, 30, 31n., 74 

Henley, John, 15n., 17, 20, 24n., 
120-32 

Hervey, Lord, 33, 38, 47, 75-78 

Highmore, John, 217 

Hill, Aaron, 10n., 14n., 34n., 35, 
38, 98, 132, 133, 153-56, 196n., 
201 n., 204-6, 212 

Hill, Charles, 204 

“Hint, William” 
ing?), 175-78, 181 

Hinton (bookseller), 23 

Hogarth, William, 104, 249, 257, 
294 

Honest Vorkshireman, 151 

“Hooker, Richard” (William Web- 
ster), 137 n. 


(Henry Field- 


Soil 


Hooker's Miscellany, 190n., 220n. 

Horace, 92, 191 

Hosier, Admiral, 111 

Hubbard (bookseller), 23 

Hudibras, 161 

Huggonson, John, 19, 153, 201-3, 
240, 244, 280 

Hughs (bookseller), 23 

Humours of Oxford, 28, 30, 171, 
206 

Hyp-Doctor,7 n., 12n., 40, 116, 121- 
31 


Injured Innocence, 209 n. 
Inoculation, 255, 260 
Italian actors, 219, 221 


Jackson (bookseller), 19 n. 
Jacobites, 44, 123 

Jesuits, 243 

Johnson, Charles, 184n., 209, 211 n. 
Jones, Jezreel, 10 n. 

Jones, R. F., 102 n. 


Lacey, Joseph, 276 

Lady’s Revenge, 196, 197, 199 

Laureateship, 50-56, 84n., 97, 121, 
188, 189-93 

L’Avare, 220 

Lawyers, 232-34, 279 

Literary Courier of Grub-street, 4, 
20-22, 115, 120 

Literary Criticism, 49-104, 158-70, 
188-92 

London Daily Post, 287 

London Evening Post, 112, 114n., 
277 

London Journal, 6n., 7 n., 65, 69 n., 
106, 107, 113 

London Magazine, 12, 114-16, 135 n. 

Lounsbury, Thomas R., 5, 30, 33 n., 
35, 40n., 41, 42, 84n., 102 

Love for Money, 211 n. 

Lover, 193 

Luke, Sir Samuel, 161 

Lyddell, Richard, 229 n. 


Macklin, Charles, 170 
“Mad Doctor”, 265 


S02 


Maevius (“M”), 7, 8, 31, 39, 40, 
45 n., 87, 97, 106, 171. See also 
Russel, Richard. 

Magazines, 12, 13, 16, 114-16 

Malcolm, Sarah, 80 

Man of Mode, 210 

Man of Taste, 153, 198-201, 206 

Mapp, Mrs., 264, 266 

Marlborough, Duke of, 65 

Martyn, John, 26, 40, 45, 85n., 
TNO me e229 ZO attacked 
by Henley, 121-26; literary criti- 
cism, 55, 68, 69, 160; botanical 
and medical comment, 227, 250, 
251. See also Bavius. 

Martyn, Thomas, 40, 42 

Medicine, 249-89 

Memoirs of the Society of Grub- 
street, 4n., 6n., 14, 24-26, 28, 30, 
39, 45, 67, 68, 115; quoted, 8, 11, 
108 n. 

Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 94 

Miller, James, 28-30, 38, 46, 152, 
198-201, 206, 246 

Milton (Bentley’s ed.), 85-96 

Milton Restored and Bentley De- 
posed, 90 

Mock Doctor, 173, 180 

Mock Lawyer, 212 

Modern Husband, 118, 173, 176, 178 

Modish Couple, 208 

Moliére, 182, 220 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 75 

Moore, Dr. (“Worm-powder 
Moore”), 62 

Moore-Smythe, James, 22, 27, 31, 
34n., 37, 47, 57-63, 97 

Moral Essay (11), 58 

Morell, Thomas, 14n. 

Morning Post, 105 

Murphy, Arthur, 185 

Muses Address to the King, 69n. 

Newspapers, 5-7, 11, 105-14, 116- 
SV ee 

Nichols, John, 14n. 

Nichols, Philip (“Charles Rhodes”), 
168 n. 

Non-jurors, 42-44, 123, 247 


INDEX 


Old Debauchees, 173, 176, 178, 180 

Oldmixon, John, 169 

One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope, 58, 64 

Operas, 219, 222 

Ormond, Duke of, 122 

“Osborne, Francis” (Thomas Pitt), 
113 


Page, John, 287-89 

Palmer, S. (bookseller), 19 n. 

Palmer, John, 268n. 

Pantomime, 223 

Paradise Lost, 85-96 

Parsons, Humphrey, 24 

Pasquin, 33, 183, 184 

Patentees of Drury Lane Theater, 
194, 214-19 

Penn, William, 245 

Periodicals, 5-7, 11, 12, 13, 16, 105- 
57, 291 

Phillips, Ambrose, 29 

Phillips, Edward, 212 n. 

“Philosopher’s Prayer”, 
234-36 

Piers, William, 15, 134 

Pitt, Thomas, 113 n. 

Politics, 5-7, 112, 122, 133-35, 226 

Pope, Alexander, 45n., 46, 96, 
129 n., 183, 186, 204 n., 279 n.; 
connection with Grub- street Jour- 
nal, 4, 7, 8, 18, 25-39; and the 
Dunces, 47- 83; ‘contributions by, 
17n., 89n., 97, 103 n., 138, 189; 
attacked, 118, 122, 126, 132, 140, 
141, 143, 149 

Popple, William, 146, 153, 196-204 

“Poppy, Mr.,” 3, 7, 28, 39, 47 

Portland, Duchess of, 247 

Post Boy, 15n., 114n. 

Post Man, 106 

Presbyterians, 242 

Price, Mrs. Lucy, 137, 138, 141 

Prior, Matthew, 32 

Prisons, 230-32 

Pritchard, Mrs. Dian, 111n. 

Profund, 58 

Prompter, 4n., 12, 14n., 40, 106, 
116, 146-53, 196-204, 221 

Publishers, 19, 162-67 

Punch, 16, 259 


144-52, 


INDEX 


Quacks, 263-89 

Quakers, 243-46 

Queen Anne, 247 

Queen Charlotte, 6n., 51, 52, 270 

“Quibus, Dr. Ephraim,” 20, 119n., 
128, 250 

“Quidnunc,” 3, 7 

Quincy, Dr. John, 252, 253 


Racine, 220 

Ralph, James, 27, 38, 47, 68-74, 
106n., 117, 208, 212 

Read, Sir Will, 264 

Register. See Weekly Register. 

Rehearsal, 69 

Religion, 234-48 

“Rhodes, Charles’ (Philip Nich- 
ols), 168 n. 

Rich, John, 170, 181, 211-13 

Richardson, Samuel, 154, 157 

Rival Modes, 57 

Roberts, J. (bookseller), 19 

Robinson, Dr. Nicholas, 251 

Rochester, Earl of, 211 n. 

Russel, James, 44 

Russel, Richard, 7 n., 19 n., 26, 30 n., 
162, 177, 184, 246, 289; identity, 
40-46, 140; comment on news 
items, 110-12, 291; literary criti- 
GIST NMOS DO OOM AZ 78a S0ii., 
89 n., 93; dramatic criticism, 180, 
188, 193, 206, 209; attacks on, 
121-27, 140, 149, 242; orthodoxy, 
137, 178, 226, 232, 234-37, 249. 
See also Bavius, Maevius. 

Russel, W., 44 

Russell, Dr. Richard, 40 n., 41, 42 n. 

Rymer, Thomas, 8n. 


Saffold, Dr. Tom, 264 

Sanders, P. (bookseller), 19 n. 

St. James Weekly Packet, 15n. 

Savage, Richard, 26n., 27, 30, 76, 
132 

Shakespeare (Theobald’s ed.), 96- 
102 


Siddons, Sarah, 170 
Smallpox, 255, 260 
Smith, George, 165 


156) 


Spectator, 5, 167 

Speculatist, 65 

Sophonisba (James Thomson’s), 
207 


Stage Mutineers, 217 

Steele, Richard, 9, 31 

Stephens (actor), 212 

Stephens’ Thesaurus, 162 

Swift, Jonathan, 4, 8, 26n., 27, 29, 
30, 31, 32, 54n., 58, 59, 65, 70, 
134, 184 n. 


Tacitus, 21 

Tasso, 160 

Tate, Nahum, 8 n. 

Tatler, 167 

Taylor, Dr. John, 264, 267-71, 280 

Tea, 259 

Theater, 170-87, 193-225 

Theobald, Lewis, 14n., 19, 27, 29, 
35, 47, 50, 52, 62 n., 67n., 84, 96- 
104 

Theology, 144-50, 234-48 

Thomson, James, 27, 51, 207, 208 

Tillotson, Archbishop, 245 

Tindall, Dr. Matthew, 136-50, 234- 
36, 238 

Tindall, Nicholas, 136, 137 n., 138 
141 

Tom Thumb, 173 

Turner, Dr. Daniel, 250, 274, 276 


’ 


Universal Spectator, 114n. 
Urry, John, 160 


Vanbrugh, John, 216 
Vergil, 8, 159 
Voltaire, 256 


Waller, Edmund, 97 

Walpole, Horace, 268 n. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 22, 113 n. 

“Walsingham,” 112, 113 

Warburton, William, 62n., 67 n. 

Ward, Joshua, 14n., 38, 108, 264, 
267, 271-89 

Ward, William, 282 

Warner (bookseller), 23 

Watts, John (bookseller), 163-66 


354 


Webster, William (“Richard 
Hooker”), 137 n. 

Weekly Medley, 70, 106 

Weekly Register, 7n., 11, 12n., 
23 n., 56, 71, 72, 105, 116-19 

Welsted, Leonard, 58, 64, 97 

“Welstede, A.’ (John Henley), 
129, 132 

Wesley, Samuel, 61 n. 

Westmoreland, Earl of, 281 

Whiston, William, 238 

Whitehall Evening Post, 114n. 


INDEX 


Wilkes, Robert, 80, 170, 209 
Williams, John, 230-32 
Woolston, Thomas, 137, 237 
Wright, Thomas, 165 


Yonge, Sir William (“Dramati- 

cus”), 14n., 173-80, 184, 209, 210 
York Buildings Company, 10n. 
Young, Edward, 32 


Zaire, 212 
Zara, 204-6 























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